


The World Was Never Quiet

by SnowF



Series: Dead winds' and spent waves' riots [1]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Age Difference, Arson, Arsonists too, Blood and Violence, Character Death, Dubious Morality, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Female Anti-Hero, Fires, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Heroin to villain, Morally Ambiguous Character, Multi, Murder, On the Run, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Sugar Bowl - Freeform, Volunteers are stupid, messed up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-01-05 08:43:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 22
Words: 58,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12186723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowF/pseuds/SnowF
Summary: [Book found in the ashes of the Valorous Farms Dairy after the suspicious fire that destroyed the farm. An extensive study is requested. Apparently related to the Dupin, Snicket, Baudelaire and Quagmire's cases. Mentions the Snicket files and the sugar bowl. Notes of the agents K.,V. & S. B. : Cassandre Dupin's case must be reopened. She may not be who we all think she is.]





	1. Introductory notes

**Disclaimer :** This story is Lemony Snicket's property - though I think I owed the right to recount it, don't you think ?

 **Spoilers :** This tale goes back to the dreadful life of the Baudelaire and, if you haven't read it yet, you will probably be terrified and disgusted. I suppose it will be even worse when you'll get to my dreadful life.

 **Rating :** T, I don't want innocent children to stumble upon this horrible tale.

 **A/N**  : The editor of this book believes you need to know that given the particular writing of this tale, it will only loosely follow Lemony Snicket's books and the TV show they came up with (she still doesn't understand why would anyone do such a thing, but anyway). Since it was originally written in her very foreign language, she'd like to indicate that it is (still) not English, she may or may not do spelling/grammar/conjugation/syntax mistakes traducing it. She's sorry if it disturbs you too much. She wishes for an as pleasant reading as possible.

* * *

**The world has never been quiet**

* * *

**I** 've been asked at length to write my point of view on everything that happened. I always thought it would be useless since no one really cares about it, apart from those who already know it. Some condemned me without knowing anything, without even  _trying_  to understand – that lot does not deserve my attention, let alone my time or my work.

But a time will come when everything will catch up on me and, at this moment, I'm afraid I won't have time to say everything. Because those who know, or believe they know, only know crumbs. No one knows the full story, at least not as it happened to me. I suppose I owe them this much, a well-constructed, or a least coherent, account. And exhaustive. Something to oppose their stupid and moralistic arguments. Something to prove that while I am a disaster, I am not a monster. Perhaps a monstrous disaster, but not a monster. At least not in view and that's all that matters, right ?

But this whole story seems so remote, so complex that I can't write it in full. That would a waste of pages, a waster of ink, a waste of time spent on writing details that don't matter at all on the big picture of my damned life. And if this journal/memoir/tale were to fall into the wrong hands, it could still look like a simple collection of novellas barely connected. The main character has changed too much for me to be able to really identify to her. To me.

It will be a collection of lies, because my life is a lie and because lies have weaved my life like a weaving loom. It's going to be tragic, probably theatrical and most likely dreadful, but it's going to be a story. My story. An old friend of my father would probably like it if it didn't tell events he already knows… Since he lived a few of them.

Every good story begins with an abstract, a taster, something of the like. I will only use three words that will probably make a better summary than any long speech of the poor girl I was, the orphan I became and the murderer I am today.

 **V** olunteers.

 **F** elony.

 **D** eflagration.


	2. Lie 1 - I'll save you!

  **Lie 1 : I'll save you!**

"Are we going to be hanging around for long?

\- They're arriving. Be patient.

\- That's what you've been saying for ages," I whined. "Your  _friends_  don't know about punctuality?

\- Being on time is not always a sign of politeness."

I sighed, exasperated. I really loved my father. There wasn't anyone better than him, at least not as far as I knew and not back then, but he sometimes was  _exasperatingly_ calm. He could tell the entire world that nothing was wrong while everything collapsed all around him, and I'm almost certain that, if indeed everything had collapsed around him, he would have had the audacity to explain me how important it was to build according to standard practice to avoid this kind of annoyance.

But he was my father, and calm was his default setting. He loved to tell me that I was more like my mother than him, but I got the chance to check. She was long dead. A car accident - at least that's what he told me over and over again and what I believed for a long time. I only have very vague memories of her and, since her death, it was only my father and I. Well, me and myself, most of the time; he worked a lot, moved a lot, and didn't want me to be around. I got raised by nannies and tutors. My father didn't want me to go to school. I didn't know why, but he didn't want to.

But this time, it was different. He  _asked_  me to come with him while  _I_  didn't ask. Until he ordered me to pack, I had actually no idea he was leaving. When I had the gall to ask him where we were going, he only told me I need both summer  _and_  winter clothes. Might as well have said he didn't want to tell me. We were in the middle of August: where could he go as to need winter clothes? But I obeyed, packed my suitcase with every coats that I had and kept in my bad some t-shirts and light jacket for the journey.

Journey that should be done from the edge of the city, through the hinterlands. And that's what we were waiting for: the friend supposed to drive us to this place where I would need winter clothes in summer. But he wasn't arriving and this lateness annoyed me, even more than my father's behaviour. Well, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't only annoyed by the lateness: I had forgotten my typewriter back home and my father refused to go get it. The result? I only had my notebook and pencils to write and I had  _plenty_  of things to write. The hinterlands always inspired me lot of stories and I already imagined a novella in which a criminal wanted by all polices but gifted with a remarkable talent of disguise would flee through deserted lands to Mortmain Mountains.

Looking back, I realize that I was already deep into secrets and schemes before I even understood I was. It was not this damn novella in particular, and I will repeat it in this tale, but I always had the strange and ironic ability to predict what would happen to me one day through jokes or cynicism – but I digress.

"Cassandre Dupin," my father hailed me. He had seen my pout. "You're not here to whine, young woman.

\- I still don't know why I'm here.

\- You'll know when we arrive. Ah, here they are." He gestured a dark car that slowed down near us. "Wait for me, I will greet them."

I managed to stop myself from uttering another remark about their punctuality and watched my father. I'd like to say that all that mattered for me at this point was this slender and distinguished man, this impressive man of knowledge and diplomacy - but that would a lie. I couldn't think of anything but my typewriter, packed in its leather box, waiting for me in our entrance. And I thought about it to such an extent that I didn't realize that the debonair calm of my father had turned into defiance and that the car was not friendly.

I can't get myself to tell you what happened right now. Instead, I can't help wondering what would have happened if my father had accepted to go get this damned machine. We would have been way later than them. Maybe they would have left and I would have been focused enough to understand something was off. Maybe my father would have understood. Looking back, getting my machine would have changed  _many_  things. Some lives would have been longer, others, well, would have been shorter. Fires would not have been set, others would have been. All that fuss for a  _typewriter._

"Cassandre, run "

I never heard my father scream before that. It wasn't in his habits nor his genes to yell, even to reprimand me. I jumped and turned stunned eyes in his direction. I only got enough time to see the car's doors opening and multiples arms seizing him before he disappeared from my sight. It took a few more seconds to understand they  _were no friends._ My blood froze in my veins and, like the child I was, I ran - but not in the good direction. To the car that was taking my father away. There were noises of hits, screams, yells, before he managed to look at me through the window and scream another time for me to run.

"DAD!" I replied. I completely forgot the typewriter. "DAD!

\- I'll find you, I promise! The eye, mind the eye!

\- I'll save you dad! DAD! »

I can't say why exactly I stopped following the vehicle to run in the opposite direction. In fact, I don't think I had any sound reason to do it. All I knew was that my father had ordered me to run and I had to run. Taking my bag on the way, I rushed to the nearest shop, a joke shop full of shelving and useless stuff. Forgetting my manners I crossed it to go to the most important artery of the city, where I would be able to grab a taxi to go back home.

When I turned back to make sure I hadn't dropped a clown klaxon or a whoopee cushion, I understood a little better why I had to run. One of the men of the car had left it and was on my heels – a man with a beard but no hair, struggling with the shop guy who was arguing about a portable buzzer. Feeling panic invading my thoughts, I ran again and entered the first building on my right.

If I had been in my normal state, I would have  _never_  entered this kind of building. It was literally falling into ruin and I only figured it out in the stairs: a part of it had collapsed in a huge pile of rubble. It almost looked like this heaping up of concrete and framework was some sort of artistry. Unable to think straight, I banged the nearest door I found closed, wishing someone would open.

And someone opened. A little woman, very little, just as wrinkled as an old apple wearing an old grey apron and a pinkish dress. My heart beating hard in my chest, I didn't wait for her to tell me to enter to do it and I found myself in the middle of a poorly decorated but rather spacious room. The sun was shining through broken but clean windows. The ground under my feet creaked when I paced the room to check no one followed me.

"Is everything okay, young lady ?

\- No, nothing's ok," I let out. My voice sounded shrill with fear. "My father… Has been kidnapped, he told me to run but I…

\- Calm down, calm down! Everything will be fine, just tell me…

\- No, nothing will be fine, my father had been kidnapped! I need to calm someone, the police or…"

I stopped when I realized what I was doing: I didn't know this woman. I didn't even know where I was. Maybe I was stepping into a trap, maybe I had just signed my death warrant. My father told me to run and I had stopped.  _Stopped!_

The beatings of my heart went faster again and I rushed to the windows. The man with a beard but no hair was following a fake lead that led him to the back of the building. The old lady, near me, was looking at me with a mix of awe, inability to understand and fear. And honestly, I think I would already have run if I'd been her. Well, if I'd been myself I would have run too.

"I need to go," I said restlessly. "I need…

\- Do you want to call anybody? You look panicked…

\- No, I need to go. I'm sorry I…" I watched for a while, unable to find my words. "Thanks for your help.

Wait, you can't…"

\- I never heard the rest of her sentence and rushed again in the stairs. I still wonder what this old lady would have done, if I'd stayed. Would she have called the police? Was she a friend? An Arsonist? A Volunteer? Both? Anyway, I ran again until I recognized the street I was walking. I hailed the first taxi and threw myself inside while I gave him my address. My father's address.

The journey seemed to last an eternity, but I ended up home. It was downtown, in a calm but lively neighbourhood where only families lived. I didn't know my neighbours, not enough to get the idea to knock at their door. My panic had washed away in the taxi and, once I had paid him, I found myself alone in front of my door. I didn't have the keys, but I knew where to find some - in the trunk of one of the cypresses of the alley.

And, for the first and last time since I've left my father, a wave of calm and comfort flooded me as soon as I passed the door; everything was where it was supposed to be, from the typewriter in the corridor to the trinkets on the walls. Everything was there, except my father. I sat one on the dining room's chair and took my head in my hands. I needed help. Somebody had to help me. The police? My father didn't trust them.

Friends, then. But who, exactly? We had some, obviously, but who to choose? Who to trust? Panic came back immediately, tears came to my eyes and my throat tightened.  _Who to call?_ What to do? I tried to remember his last words. I didn't understand everything, but it was about an eye.  _Mind the eye._ That was all I heard.

I then began to search the whole house to try to forget the severity of the situation. The whole house and especially where I usually didn't have the right to go. I took everything I could and everything that looked important. Files, papers, loose sheets, photographs, everything that could get me or anybody else to my father.

When I reached the depth of the library, I took some books he always designed as essential. I was going to empty a drawer when I realized the back of the library was hollow. It sounded hollow, anyway. I fiddled with the back of the furniture to try to understand what was going on when I touched and pressed a button.

I don't really khow in which order everything happened. I was in such a panic and urge that I must have pressed the button in the same time as I knocked it over. Or maybe it was the other way around ? Honestly I'm not even sure it changes anything. Especially if we take into account what this fake-back contained.

When I figured out this fake-back was ornamented with an eye, I let down everything, drawer, books, everything, to rummage into the cache I just found. There was nothing in there, except a teeny tiny thing that could fit in my hand. I took it to expose it to the light and was going to open it when I heard knocking. I almost fell from my ladder and put the thing in my bag with the files, papers, photographs and books.

I walked to the door furtively and looked out the peephole. I sighed in relief when I recognized the intruders and opened the door. They entered quickly and looked around to make sure nothing wrong happened. I know that now, they were searching for something. And this something wasn't really me.

_"They"_  meant Beatrice and Bertrand Baudelaire, two of my father's best friends. If they'd given me the time, I would probably have called them. They were often invited here, and vice-versa. I knew well their three children, Violet, Klaus and Sunny. I used to play with the two eldest and went to the baptism of the youngest. They weren't  _exactly_  friends, but they were my father's friends' children and it was a good enough reason to see them.

"Cassandre," Beatrice finally said. "My poor child, we learned for your father.

\- He… He's been kidnapped but I… But I don't know who did this…

\- Come here."

She opened her arms and, like the child I still was for a few days, I ran into them and finally let my tears roll. I didn't care about my bag anymore, fallen on the floor with a dull noise. When I think about it, if I'd known how important the content of my bag was, I probably wouldn't have thrown it away. But at this point, I was the only one who knew what was inside and it's probably the reason why I'm still alive today.

When I went out of tears and my sobs finally stopped, I pulled myself from Beatrice Baudelaire's arms and wiped out my reddened eyes. She handed me a tissue and put a protective and maternal hand on my back. Her husband was going through everything I already went through. When he came back, he looked worried.

"Do you know if anyone came before you?

\- I…" My thoughts were blurry, but I knew for sure that I was the first to enter my home since we left. But still, something in my mind told me to keep quiet. "I don't know… I didn't check…

\- She is chocked, Bertrand. Are you sure it's here?

\- It should be. I will stay a bit, take her home."

And I had neither the will nor the desire to resist. I let her take me to her car, then from the car to their home. Their house,  _their manor,_ rather, was beautiful. Huge and beautiful, way bigger than ours even if my father used to say that there is no place like home. And that was true. Maybe not when he said it, maybe not to the kid I was, but it was true. Because in this house, there were books everywhere, books about everything, maybe not hundreds of them, but enough. And because this house was safe. And believe me when I say that nothing in this world is safe anymore.

Back then, at least, the Baudelaire's house was considered as one of the most beautiful in town and, even if I didn't know yet and would only know once it would be too late, one of its safest places. That had probably much to do with the wealth that built it, but it mainly had to do with the importance of its owners. But on that subject, I had no more idea.

All I knew was that I was alone in the great hall, my bag in my hand and a sudden need to run again. The only thing that stopped me was the arrival of the three Baudelaire children who came hurtling in front of me to meet what they thought to be their parents. Beatrice didn't give them the time to welcome me since she asked them to wait here while she found me a room. One of the many rooms of the house.

What is the saddest thing with these memories is that everything could have gone differently. I don't know what would have happened if I didn't lie to Bertrand and told him this thing he was looking for was in my bag. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't opened the door either. I only know, and it's still much, that no matter my choices, they would have influenced everything drastically. I'm not even sure there were any real good choices, especially at this point.

The Baudelaire children, however, couldn't do anything to influence what would happen to them. And yet they came in this room to meet the then semi-orphan about to become a full-fledged one, after having assured their mother that they would be tactful with their guest. The way they knocked at my door and entered, it was clear they were walking on eggshells. Violet had her hair tied, she was probably wondering if an invention could find lost people with something that belonged to them. Klaus was putting his glasses back on his nose and Sunny had crawled to me to squeeze my leg with her tiny arms. And I couldn't help smiling in front of such sweetness.

"I am… We are really sorry, Cassandre," Violet finally declared. "If we can do anything…

\- I don't think you can. But it's very kind of you.

\- Don't worry. Do you want to… Go out? Get some fresh air?

\- Not now, no.

\- Tomorrow, the?" Klaus proposed. "We were going to go to Briny Beach anyway."

I kept quiet for a while – again, any other choice than the one I did would have changed everything. I looked at the three of them before nodding. I would never find my father alone and I wouldn't find him without help. Adult help. It would an opportunity to look around and, that was the most important thing, to get some stuff from home and check one last time if anything there could help me find where those men took my father.

"Tomorrow then.

\- Alright. Oh, I almost forgot," the eldest told me while handing me a pile of clothes she was holding behind her back the whole time. "Our mother asked us to give you that. Just some old clothes of hers, she thinks they will fit until you can go back home.

\- Thank you very much, Violet."

The young girl smiled and turned around, soon mimicked by her brother and sister. When the door closed down behind them and left myself alone again, I put the pile of clothes on the bed and walked to the window. It overlooked the pretty garden that surrounded the house and one of the biggest trees. I was surrounded by books, papers and pens but still, for the first time in my life, I didn't want to write. I had nothing to create, no histories, no tale, nothing. I felt like my life had turned way more dramatic than the most interesting of my tales, more tragic than the saddest too. And god knows I was right.

I know how most of books work. We begin by the beginning, by what marked a beginning or a revival. It's obvious that, would my father still be here, nothing that happened to me would have happened  _like this_. But I'm still sure that it's not this day, nor this lie that changed who I was. It happened later, way later. But let's not burn bridges; other events rushed in before I came to it.


	3. Lie 2 : Everything will be fine.

**Lie 2 : I promise everything will be fine.**

The day after, as promised, I got ready to go with Violet, Klaus and Sunny to Briny Beach. I had passed a terrible night, a sleepless night, emptier than those pages I write on. I imagined it all, from kidnapping for a ransom to terrorism, but then I remembered that our fortune was ludicrous next to the Baudelaire's, for example, and there was no terrorism anymore in this city.

I think this all-nighter was the second worst I've had in my short life. The first would come later, when I would dwell on the horrors that my first and last love told me, and those I told him back. Truths, all in all, except one. Well here it was the same, but the other way around : of all the hypotheses I built, all were wrong but one.

Beatrice's clothes, less outmoded than I thought, fit almost perfectly and I could go out without being cold or hot. Even if I had no idea of the value of what I was carrying, I knew it was the last thing I had from home except, well, home, so I took it with me.

The journey was quiet, respectful and awkward. The poor children didn't know what to say or what to do, fearing they would hurt me, and I wasn't in the mood of helping them. It's only when we reached the crossing of their street and mine that I finally spoke.

"Go ahead, I'll join you later," I said with a poor smile. "I must get some stuff from home.

\- You're sure? We can come, if you want.

\- No, it's okay. Go ahead.

\- But mother does not want us to leave you," Klaus hesitated. "She said you shouldn't…

\- I promise everything will be fine and I'll find you later."

It took some encouragements for them to leave in the direction of the beach. I waited for them to disappear from my field of vision before I turned to go home. Of the two promises I just made, I only managed to keep one of them - not the one I wanted to keep. But I didn't have the choice. Neither did they. Neither did almost every protagonists of this sinister story.

The house was just as I'd left it so I entered without really looking. Bertrand had cleaned everything that had fallen in the debacle so I had to unclean everything to pack everything my bag could still carry. This time, I wasn't searching for proves or clues : I wanted to take everything that reminded me of my father. I put his tuning fork in my pocket, his cigarettes in another and walked the long corridors until I found his room.

It was a sanctuary, his room. I didn't enter it for years because I didn't have the right to. While mine had been painted again and again, his was the most simple and less decorated room of the house. It was desperately white and empty, except for a closet, a bed and a nightstand that I was emptying. If I'd known those white walls were in fact covered with a fluorescent paint, I would have been more careful. I would have taken photos. Instead, and perhaps it was better off this way, I took his old notebook hidden under multiple books. It was full of bookmarks and added sheets so it hardly fit into my bag. I was trying to make room for it when I heard a glass explode and footsteps. Voices followed.

_Run,_ my father said. This time, I didn't run. I slipped inside his closet, praying every gods and every spirits that no one would open the door, and I waited, my heart beating hard my chest and my hands shaking. I'd left the drawer on the floor. If anyone saw it, they would know someone came and this someone was still there.

If only I'd died at this exact moment! I would have taken my father's secrets to the graves, even those I knew nothing about, and this teeny tiny thing that would cause so much pain, so much suffering and so many deaths. But fate had decided otherwise and, after multiple bangs and bumps, silence came back. I then took a chance on checking outside the closet.

Everything seemed fine. The house seemed empty. I was trying to find the backdoor, to leave the place without getting noticed when I realized someone wasn't fine and  _nothing was fine._ The door was stuck, even if there was no lock, and a thick white smoke was crawling all around the house. It came from the library.

What I discovered there had me terrified and, I have to admit it now, fascinated. The library was burning. Books had been knocked down and flames were licking them, one by one, until they completely consumed them. A draft from the living-room was feeding those flames and suddenly redoubled their intensity. The lamps on the shelves exploded. I was stupid, although perhaps not more than today, so I didn't move when the pieces of shattered glass reached and cut me here and there. But flames were dancing before my eyes, destroying my house and everything I'd ever known and I couldn't get myself to look away. It was like those ballets I went to with my father. Gracious, slow. Dangerous.  _Beautiful._

I actually didn't move until the smoke became too thick for me to breath. At this point only I realized I had to  _run_  and I had to do it quickly. The few minutes I'd spent on contemplating my library's demise had been enough for the flames to spread to the corridors, the living room and the kitchen. They'd reached the second floor when I arrived in the entrance.

I shouldn't have been surprised, but when I saw that this door wasn't opening either, a sudden nausea tore my insides. I was stuck in a burning house. I was alone in a burning house, motionless when I should have been running. So that's what I did. I got out of breath searching for a way out, wasting the little oxygen I had left.

I ended up in the storeroom, but the fire was gaining ground. Hunched up in a corner of the room, I was squeezing, almost compulsively, a piece of paper I'd grabbed in my dash through the corridors. It was a picture of my father and I, he sitting in front of the piano and me sitting next to him, taken my Beatrice Baudelaire a year before. He was calmly smiling, as always, and smoked placidly. Happily.

Nothing to do with the panic that had taken me and drove me, between two coughing fits, to scream, beg for help, when I knew that if anyone was indeed there, this wasn't going to help me escape  _his_  arson. It's common sense right? We never put out fires we start. And still I screamed, screamed louder than ever, screamed with all the breath that still were in my lungs while smoke slowly surrounded me like a grey shroud.

I've been told what happened then. All I personally remember is me passing out a few seconds after hearing another window shattering, and the feeling of something or someone taking me away. And as I'm not writing someone else's memories but mine, I stop here.

When I finally opened my eyes, the first thing that came to my mind was the thought that I was dead. But heaven couldn't look like the seedy room in which I was, nor like the mattress with prominent springs I was lying on. My throat burned and I  _smelt_  of burning. My whole body was sore but I was alive. Well and truly alive. My bag was on the floor near the bed and my creased photo was leaning on the wall on the bedside.

"You're awaken," I heard when I grabbed it. "I thought you would never open your eyes.

\- Who…"

My hoarse voice sounded unfamiliar to me and my throat refused to utter any articulated sound. I instinctively put my hand on my neck and gulped with difficulties. My vision was blurry. I didn't recognize the man who was in front of me, talking to me, leaning on the prop of a door that looked as seedy as the rest of the room.

It took me several blinks to finally see him correctly. He was tall, rather well dressed. Nothing in him really popped out except for two things : his eyes and his eyebrows. Well, his eyes and his eyebrow. An unique eyebrow, slightly curved with curiosity. And his eyes, two marbles of the most vivid and intelligent green. He had a gentle gaze, almost soft, and, that was the most important thing, he vaguely looked like my father. I know why today, but it was something in the behaviour, in the bearing and in the way he looked at me.

"Who…" I tried again, wincing. "Where…

\- Don't push it. You've spent too much time in there and I can't even imagine what would have happened if I had not… Anyway." He shook his head and came closer to lean on the bedside. "I'm Jacques Snicket. We are in a hotel, on the edge of the city.

\- My… House?

\- It burnt down. I am sorry."

And he was. He really was, I know for sure. There was compassion in those green eyes that didn't leave me for a second. And in mine, there were tears that rolled down my face for ages, though I don't down if it was because of the smoke or because of the fact that everything I had left had burnt. Both, surely.

He stayed at my bedside, though. He didn't put a comforting hand on my shoulder, he didn't hold me in his arms like Beatrice. He just stayed there, quiet but there, reasonably far from me. I know from experience that he didn't comfort me out of sheer safety – he didn't know how I exactly was. He couldn't be certain, anyway. He ended up sitting at the other end of the mattress, near my right feet, and sighed.

"I know this is not the right time, but I need to ask you questions. Just nod to answer, right?" Nod. "Are you Cassandre Dupin?" Nod. "You were supposed to be with the Baudelaire right? " Nod. "Then why… No, forget it.

\- Needed… Stuff… Father…

\- I know. Don't worry.

\- Vio… Aus… Su…" A new coughing pits. "Where..?

\- Many things happened. You don't need to learn everything in one go."

And tears rushed down again because I could very well imagine everything I didn't know. Too well. He didn't insist and went out, to let me sleep or flee this rather one-sided conversation, I have no idea. For my part, my clouded brain didn't leave me any choice and took me down again in a deep and heavy sleep. A sick sleep.

I didn't wake up in the seedy hotel room, but at the back of a car, lying on the passenger seats. It took me a few seconds to remember everything that happened or, at least, everything I could remember. In front of me, Jacques was driving and looked at me in the rear-view mirror. He slightly smiled.

"Hello, Cassandre.

\- Why are we…" My voice was a tad less hoarse and sounded more like what I was used to. "I…

\- You must be hungry. And thirsty. There is some things to eat in the bag at your feet. We have plenty of time to speak, believe me."

And I was hungry. And thirsty, so I didn't try to push him and ate up  _everything_  that was in the bag. I watered everything with the bottle of orange juice that went with the sandwiches and the biscuits before I remembered that  _I wasn't supposed_ to stroll with an obscure man whose neither the name or first name rang a bell.

"You remember my name, do you?

\- You are Jacques Snicket," I replied. "But I don't know you.

\- No, you don't. But I know you. I've known your parents, your father especially. A good man. A noble heart.

\- Have you found him?

\- Sadly, no. So many things piled up, this last week…"

He slowly shook his head and sighed. I stared at him, even if it mostly meant that I stared at the mirror that partly reflected the face of the man who saved me from the flames that ate up my house. He wasn't old, but wasn't young either; he was pretty much around my father's age, but looked older. The way his eyebrows, no, his eyebrow, was frowned, the sadness of his eyes, the way he had to cast glances at him, nothing evoked youth in him.

"But who are you? Why am I here?

\- I came to see you. I hoped we could talk, when I found your house in flames and you, almost dead," he explained with a calm, almost erudite voice. "I am… An investigator. I wanted to help you find your father.

\- No one helps people without hoping for something in return.

\- Your father is a friend and we were part of the same… Group. I owe him that."

He turned his eyes on the road. Perfect excuse, really: if there was something Jacques Snicket never learned to do correctly, it was lying. I've always been better than him at this game, even if he hated the idea. I already knew he was lying and it wasn't just about friendship, but I postponed my doubts and need of truth to go on with other questions.

"And the Baudelaire ? You talked about them, I remember. We should go see them, Beatrice gave me a few clothes to…

\- Their house burnt too." His voice had turned duller, heavier. His eyes were lost in the admiration of the road in front of him. Of us. "Beatrice and Bertrand are dead. I am sorry.

\- They are… And the children? Where are they?

\- They're minors. Law requires them to be placed with a tutor until they're legally adults. They just… Changed home.

\- Why can't I take care of them? I'm of age and I'm a friend of the family!"

He didn't answer. And for the longest seconds of my life, I didn't say anything either. Yeah, well, it's cliché, all those silences but can you imagine? I was alone in a car with a man I barely knew, still nauseous and half-conscious. I just learnt that my father was still missing, that my closest friends, those who had taken me in, were dead and that their children were  _already_ tossed around from homes to homes when I had promised them I would find them. Believe me, it's hard to register.

But if my silence was perfectly justified, Jacques' wasn't. He was supposed to talk, supposed to tell me all the horrors that had happened while I was down, while I was going from chaotic waking to long hours of semi-coma. A full week, fuller than the nineteen last years of my life. I was waiting for answers to question I didn't want to ask. Answers he didn't give me.

"Answer me!" I exploded, well, exploded. Tried to scream, rather, until my voice broke and I got stopped by a painful coughing pit. "Why don't you talk? I want to know what's going on!

\- You can't take care of them. It's not possible.

\- But why? I'm sure it's what Beatrice and Bertrand would have wanted. I have money, and even if I don't have a house I…

\- You're dead, Cassandre. For the whole country, you died in your house's arson."

With the years, I imagined a countless times how I would die. Strangely, I see myself dying in flames, in the middle of a huge blaze lighted by one of my many enemies… Or friends, for that matter. At some point, I thought I would die by a bullet in the head, something of the sort. From time to time, I even imagine myself jumping from Mortmain Mountains and hit the frozen waters of the Stricken Stream.

But at that time, even after everything I'd already heard, I wasn't ready to hear that. To hear of my own death, when I didn't even feel like I lived it. I gulped with even more difficulties than before and ran a shaking hand in my tangled hair.

"But I promised I would… Find them, I can't…

\- They're fine. We need to focus on your father, find him and… Then he will be able to take them in.

\- They're alone, their parents are dead and they  _believe_  me dead because they didn't insist enough for me to follow them," I let out with a hardly controlled agressivity. "How can you even believe  _they're fine_?

\- They're safe now. We can't say the same of us."

Of all the lies Jacques Snicket tried to make me believe, I think this one is the worst. The worst, because, for a minute, I believed him. I believed the Baudelaire orphans were safe in a loving and understanding home. I believed that not matter what happened before, it was over and they could find a bit of comfort with this new tutor.

But he was lying. It wasn't for lack of sincerity, I'm sure he  _really_  thought they were safe. But he was lying, lying like all those who would tell me the same thing over and over again. Because there were only two safe places in this world, and neither one or the other the place the Baudelaire were going to. The two of them, however, would end up in flames and ashes in the following months.

The second part of his speech was true, though. We were not safe, even if I didn't know where we were going nor why we were going there. I wasn't wary enough, wasn't alerted enough to have the presence of mind to use the knife I had taken back home against this driver and his drawling voice to force him to tell me what he was scheming.

Later on, I wouldn't be wary enough to it again. But naïve enough to believe this man and follow him everywhere he would take me, believe everything he would tell me even if I knew he was lying. And naïve enough to, still today, remember him as the one and only noble heart I've ever known.


	4. Lie 3 : I've never seen this sugar bowl

  **Lie 3 : I've never seen this sugar bowl.**

We were investigating my father's kidnapping when I came across the first documents related to VFD. Well, I didn't  _come across_  them. Jacques had tasked me to go through everything I had saved from home whilst he interrogated, spied and searched clues in the field. The field meant everything around the hideout we had stopped in after several hours of car. According to him, we were still not in safety but we could consider ourselves hidden. All things considered, we were  _not_  hidden. Anyone with the slightest spark of intelligence could have tracked us, especially as I didn't know how to disguise my own tracks.

Anyway, it's in my father's notebook that I found those three letters. VFD everywhere, in coded message, in poems, in personal notes, from his teen years to my birth, with a special sets of page for his marriage with my mother and her death. My father was more laconic than Sparta itself, and only used one or two sentences to sum-up an event. A few years before my birth, under a red-written date, was written " _Received the package. In safety. A.B does not know_ ", and I have to admit that, of the whole notebook, it was the most important part.

And yet it wasn't the one I dwelt on. I rather focused on the initials, all those occurences of this VFD and all the phrases with those three letters. It was almost as if my father had gone crazy and I would have believed it if it was just for him. I had written in my own notebook everything that VFD seemed to mean. From this time forward, I didn't use it as an inspiration device anymore, but as a clue collector. Village of Fowl Devotees, a delightful town that would later on leave me stinging memories and a broken heart, Volunteers Fighting Diseases of the lovely Heimlich Hospital, the Valorous Farms Dairy that I haven't visited yet and, quite ironically the most and least important signification of all, the Volunteer Fire Department. None of that made much sense to my eyes or ears. To be honest, it does not really have much sense now - but anyway.

I tried to give sense to those letters, phrases and words as I waited for Jacques' return. Put together, they didn't have any sense anymore, especially as I spent hours staring at them. When I heard the door opening and my benefactor's voice, I didn't wait for him to hand his coat and hat to jump down his throat.

"Jacques, what does VFD mean?

\- Where have you heard of that?" He tensed immediately. I already said it, Jacques never learned how to lie. "Read, rather.

\- In my father's notebook.

\- In your… Wait, you have you father's notebook?

\- I grabbed it before the fire, yeah. But it's not what I…"

He gestured me to shut up and looked around, as if we were suddenly surrounded by spies. He closed every blinders of every windows and double-locked the door before coming back to me. He led me to sit on the age-old sofa and, a bit lost, I didn't resist and stared without the slightest of idea of what was going on.

"Cassandre, you must not tell anyone you have this notebook," he told me, both confidently and firmly. "I have not idea what is written inside, but some people would kill to have access to it, believe me.

\- But why? It's all about this thing, VFD, and poems, and codes…

\- I can't tell you what VFD is. It's too dangerous and some secrets… Must remain secret.

\- Is that a joke?"

I guessed it was absolutely not the reaction he was waiting for at the way he looked at me. Since I'd woken up from my semi-coma, I had been nothing but obedient, composed and excessively docile. I conscientiously did everything he asked me and didn't ask any questions. But Jacques didn't know me, not yet anyway, and he couldn't have known that I was waiting for the first occasion to remind him he  _literally_  snatched me without telling me who he really was, why he was searching for my father or why I had  _never_  heard of him before. And I'd just found this occasion.

"You miraculously save me from my burning house, you take me out all over the city, you assure you knew my father and you're looking for him," I listed. "But you won't tell me what this damn VFD is nor who you are? Are you kidding me?

\- I'm not kidding you, no, but some things are just beyond you.

\- No shit Sherlock? Like the fact that my father got abducted before my eyes, and in the space of fourty-eight hours his best friends died in, oh surprise, a fire? I'm not a child, Jacques!"

I was a child, of course I was. But from all of my twenty years of age, with all the experience I thought I had and all the things I thought I'd lived, I imagined myself able to hear everything, understand everything. And Jacques eventually nodded, as if he'd figured out something he was trying to ignore since ages. Or maybe it was something he refused to see. He sighed a sigh I couldn't give any signification too, weary and sad as it was. He put a hand on my shoulder and finally spoke.

"No, you're not a child," he repeated as if trying to convince himself. "And you're already so deep into this that I can't keep hiding it from you. I already told you I am Jacques Snicket. I am a… Let's say, colleague of your father. We worked together in the same organization. VFD.

\- But what does it mean

\- Many things. There's no point in telling you everything, just know that VFD was originally an organization of firemen in charge of literally putting out fires." He shrugged. "I suppose we still put out fire, but more figuratively.

\- And my father was part of this? Of VFD? He never told me.

\- Because he didn't want you to know. If he'd wanted you to be a part of it, you would already be."

I remember I was upset. I didn't understand why my father had hidden this part of his life to the point of rejecting me out of this mysterious sphere and leaving me clueless about the whole thing. Upset and humiliated, too, to hear of it from a quasi-stranger.

But I didn't say anything. I just nodded to incite him to continue. His beautiful green eyes darkened and he looked away. He took a long time before he went on with his explanation, enough time for me to lose patience.

"There was a time when VFD was a solid and powerful community, some kind of big family gathering every knowledgeable and powerful individuals. But a schism happened and tore the organization apart.

\- Then those who abducted my father…" I whispered, following the thread of my thoughts. "They were also part of VFD?

\- That's what I'm trying to find out. But even if it's the case, the two sides of the schism use the same codes, the same gathering places and the same distinguishing features. It's almost impossible to know one side from the other if you don't know who you're talking to."

He shook his again, looking beaten. Jacques Snicket, I would find out way later, long after I lost him for good, was one of the most talented investigators of VFD. He obviously was a rightful and loyal man, but he was also able to let the clues do the talking and knew how to interpret signs. And people. He read everyone like an open book but me because, while I lived with him, I learnt to bypass his technics. Living with my father had taught me the basis, even imperceptibly.

And yet he was also the most transparent man I've ever known, at least intimately. His face expressed everything his mouth dared not to utter, and the way he talked said a lot more than the words he chose. No need to have a PhD in psychology to understand this man sincerely loved the organization and truly regretted what happened. Truth is, VFD never deserved men like him, whatever the side of the schism.

"But this schism, does it separate the good from the bad?

\- Summarily, it did. My brother liked to say that it separated those who light fires from those who put them out," he sighed. "Your father, my family and the Baudelaire were part of the latter.

\- And those who light them abducted my father, according to you?

\- That's what the organization believes. That's what I'm trying to prove."

I nodded with a theatrical gravity. I was trying to be up to the trust he was placing in me – and it would be the one and only time I was. He had the delicacy not to comment on it and smiled to me. He took back his hand from my shoulder, and his weight remained. His soft heat, however, disappeared. I almost regretted it for a few seconds, enough time for me to remember I had written things in my notebook.

He didn't say anything when I searched through the pages, but read backward everything that was written. His smiled widened and he patiently waited for me to find what I wanted to say.

"My father talks of many places that seem related to VFD. Could that be of any use?

\- I don't think so. But this notebook and the papers you took with you are our best lead," he said, gesturing the dark cover of the said notebook. "If we manage to find why he was kidnapped, we'll know who did it and where he was taken.

\- Do you have an idea? That would easier than following every tiny leads.

\- Search… For everything you can find on a sugar bowl. Even if it sounds strange."

My stomach tightened when he evoked the sugar bowl but I nodded and went back to my notebook. If truth be told, I had already spotted a few entries about this sugar bowl in whatsoever form but I had not yet tried to understand what was implied. I decided to dedicate a page of my own notebook to all the mysteries, all the weird things and everything I didn't understand. The first words I wrote were  _sugar bowl_. It would the very last I would cross out of the whole list I would come up with. I have only crossed out words on this page. Like a dubious grocery list.

It actually didn't take much time to compile everything my father had written about the sugar bowl. It had been recovered by a B.B, it had remained in VFD's hands for a while and was still in their hand, last my father heard. Except this part wasn't true anymore, not since he'd been snatched anyway. When I came back to Jacques to tell him about my petty discoveries, I couldn't keep myself from checking if my bag was still where it was supposed to be.

"What do you have ?

\- The last thing my father wrote about a sugar bowl was about him retrieving it and putting it in safety," I declared. "He wrote that an A.B does not know about it. Do you have any idea who this person would be?

\- I'm afraid I don't." He was lying. Of course he was. "Do you have more recent information? This entry has been written twenty years ago.

\- It's his old notebook, it does not go beyond fifteen years ago. I'll try to search in the papers I found."

He nodded and went back to his own notebook when I glared at the bundle of loose sheets I had shoved in my bag. There were many useless stuff, some photos that didn't have any interest  _yet_  and notes taken about books I hadn't read  _yet._

My father was a brilliant, legendary calm, I already said it, but he had an organization and a truly superhuman work capability. There weren't many flaws in his organization but one remained: he was too organized, too brilliant, too clear. Most of the papers I'd found came from the same file, and this file revolved around the famous woman named A.D (yeah, it was a woman) and seemed to constitute some sort of a corpus of evidences against her. And even if everything was written so that no one not concerned by the case could understand anything, everything was so concise that following the thread of his reasoning wasn't hard. And the crux of this thread was the sugar bowl, amongst other things I would discover later on.

It wasn't hard to find the only paper about the sugar bowl. It was a journal, or something of the like, as if the bowl had kept note of its itinerary from the moment my father had found it until it stopped to move. And it quite evidently had been in many hands before coming back home in what he called the chest. Chest I had involuntarily opened in my frantic search for information. Chest whose contents I had shoved in my bag – contents that were still there, hidden under clothes and a notebook.

There was still time for me to tell Jacques I had the sugar bowl. I could have done it. Some told me I  _should have_  done it. But I didn't do it, because though I didn't really know what it was, I guessed the value of the object and knew that my father had been taken because of it. And it's truly were my lies begun – the other ones were ill-fated, unintentional. It wouldn't be the case anymore. Nevermore.

"It's written here that the sugar bowl was hidden in your house," he finally said once his reading was over. "This chest… Do you know what he was talking about?

\- No, I don't know.

\- It doesn't make sense. Why would your father have hidden the sugar bowl in your house when he wanted to distance himself from VFD, it's not logical…" He ran a hand across his face. "He could have given it, taken it away…

\- My father wanted to leave VFD?

\- After your mother's death. He was… Shocked, I suppose."

_Haha._ Shocked. It didn't sound stupid, at this point. It was rather coherent. There is something to be shocked about, when you lose your wife to a car accident shortly after your daughter's birth. There were even more reasons to be shocked if you took into account the  _real_  circumstances of her death, but anyway. All in good time.

A few minutes passed during which Jacques read his own notes to try to make sense of the itinerary while I cleaned my papers in blank envelopes and wrote on one of them the letters A and D and then on my mystery pages. He came and, again, put a hand on my shoulder.

Jacques was a handsome man. He was too old for me in every regards, but it never bothered him. Or me. Maybe more him than me, this said, but I never knew his real age anyway. He was a handsome man, as I said, but any negative emotion gave him this weird hangdog look that didn't suit him  _at all_. When he was wary or suspicious, as he was at this moment, his eyebrow stooped and hid his eyes a bit and his mouth puckered in a stupid angle. He looked like a displeased and teary child, or maybe like a wet-eyed dog. Or both, all things considered.

"Cassandre, are you sure you never saw it?

\- You're still speaking of the sugar bowl?

\- What else?" He sighed. "Listen, I know it must sound bizarre but this sugar bowl is  _extremely_ precious of the volunteers. It's probably what motivated those who abducted your father. If you remember anything, it could be…

\- What you looking for, exactly? This sugar bowl or my father?"

It wasn't fair to attack him like that, and it wasn't fair to take advantage of his weakness to knock him down, but it was either that or I would have broken down. Even if I didn't know anything about this damned sugar bowl, it weighted too much on my conscience – now try to imagine how heavy it is now. How heavy it  _was_  until I destroyed it, rather. Today it's more like a ghost, something I found myself searching in my bag for ages until I realize I don't have it anymore. Some sort of a shady phantom limb symptom, if you want.

His gaze darkened even more and he shook his head. I had reached a sensitive area and he wasn't angry at me. Maybe just a little. Well, at least I had managed to divert both our attentions from my part in the problem.

"I'm looking for your father, so that he will help me find the sugar bowl," he replied, more sincere than I would  _ever_  be in this kind of situation. "To be honest, I was in town to see him.

\- Were we supposed to meet you to go to Mortmain Mountains?

\- No." He didn't add anything. He wasn't going to tell me we were supposed to meet his sister, not just yet. "All I want is to be sure you know nothing more, nothing that could help us."

Then again I could have told him. I don't think he would have abandoned me and left my father – wasn't like him. But I shook my head a long time. A bit too much.

"I've never seen this sugar bowl, Jacques. I'm sorry.

\- It's nothing. He really wanted it hidden."

It wasn't nothing. His voice was full of remorse, full of sadness, full of things I would never know. And his sadness woke up mine and I felt tears in my eyes. He saw it and drew me in his arms with the gentleness of a friend. When I rested my head on his shoulder and let my tears soak up his jacket, when I let the regular beating of his heart and the hand on my back lulled me, I tried not to think of the sugar bowl in my bag, nor what could be inside, nor of the consequences of my choice. And it wasn't so difficult. I only had to let go inside Jacques' arms to forget that I had just sealed not just my fate, but also his, my father's and countless others' with what still looked like a white lie.


	5. Lie 4 : I won't become one of them

**Lie 4 : I won't become one of them.**

The first times of my father's search were as static as its lasts months were hectic. I was supposed to be dead, Jacques wasn't supposed to be investigating anything, and we were completely paralyzed. We spent more time waiting for the Volunteer Factual Dispatches than we spent working to find my father, and it grated on my nerves.

That being said, I must admit that my notebook quickly got filled with more clues than beginnings of novels that wouldn't know any follow-up – I was reading through them, the other day, and realized I had forgotten half of them. It wasn't for lack of writing, but I couldn't focus on one single idea. They rushed in my mind at the same speed as my anxieties.

And I watched days, weeks flying without any progress, without any news. All I saw was Jacques talking to the phone, coming and going, offering a smile or a few words when he had the time, all that over and over again in random order. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown when he came back with the look of someone who  _at last_  found something. But I wasn't in the mood of listening: I was fingering the fountain pen I borrowed him.

"Cassandre I have news about your father," he told me with such enthusiasm that I doubted it was even him. "The man with a beard but no hair vanished, but his fellows were seen in the hinterlands.

\- Great. Always wanted to see the hinterlands.

\- Wait, I'm not done." He was confusing my complete lack of spring for unbounded impatience. "Your father didn't follow them, their convoy was stopped by Volunteers. He's been transferred to someone else and I think I know who this someone is."

He handed me a picture. I barely looked at it. He already did the same things a few times: blurry pictures, expanded until it was only dots and pixels, purportedly representing my father. But every each times something was wrong. A mole, a moustache, a bowler hat – my father hated bowler hats and never wore any, probably because of some VFD codes, a gait or some manners that just didn't fit him.

"Look!

\- I've had enough of your false hopes, Jacques," I sighed, weary to the bones. "Every times you think you found something big, it's nothing but a dead-end.

\- Not this time, I'm sure of that. I took into account everything you said and I'm…

\- And what? Even if it's true and you indeed found my father, what are we going to do?" I raised my eyes to him. I was cruel, unfairly cruel. But I needed to. "Stay here and hope that one of your friends will find him of us? That's not what you promised me."

Well, he didn't  _exactly_  promise me anything. But when I met him, I imagined myself living some sort adventure, something worthy of a book, something grand. It wasn't even only about my father – it was about what my life had turned to. I was  _trapped._ Some evenings, I even wished I'd stayed in those flames he took me from, if I were to live like this.

And I don't delude myself: I'm not altruistic. I'm not really empathic and I  _never_  rush to help people. My father said he would find me, and he still hadn't. Without me realizing it and without me  _wanting_ it, I had started to resent this man who gave me his genetic pool but of whom I knew nothing. Later on, he would blame me for my propensity to lie and deceive, but he still was the first to lie and deceive me my whole life.

Jacques looked at me with incredulous eyes, as if he couldn't understand how a young girl like could be anything but ecstatic when given the opportunity to find her father. He still held the photograph, as if he still hoped I would do as if I said nothing. I didn't.

"Cassandre… Things are…

\- Complicated. I know that," I retorted, shaking my head. "But there's no way I stay here any longer. You go out, you meet people. Why wouldn't I do the same?

\- You're dead." His voice was soft. He was trying not to rush me. "You can't be seen.

\- Then disguise me. My father's notebook talks about disguises."

His look darkened and he sighed. A tired sigh, the kind you breathe when you know you've lost but still hope to find a way out. Jacques knew he couldn't stop me from doing what I wanted. And I knew he wasn't even going to try.

It was a rather fascinating sight to watch Jacques going from the fiercest determination to the most tired weariness, as if he suddenly got emptied of energy and strength to fight with me, against me, against the world. He was en extraordinary man, a man with a noble heart and even nobler intentions, but he was  _almost literally_  crushed by the world. By VFD. By me, at some point – I finished him off. Not a day goes by when I do not remember the way he looked at me, the way he had to smile without moving his lips. His eyes did the talking. When I close mine, I can see them. And it's as sweet as painful – as beautiful as it is terrifying.

"The Volunteers learn to dress up and pose as someone else for years," he tried. "You're not trained.

\- Then train me. Do it quicker, I'm sure I can foul this…" I grabbed the picture and admired it. "Count Olaf.

\- Olaf is a villain of the worst kind. He's not some foul following the Arsonists, and he knows how to dress up better than anyone.

\- I count on you for teaching me how to dress up better than he does."

I discovered only later that it was this exact sentence that convinced him to help me. Rather, the determination I had put inside. But all that mattered was that he nodded and gestured me to follow him in the room he used as a storage place. There was a trunk amongst his suitcases, and I wasn't allowed to touch it. When he opened it, I realized why: it was full of costumes, sundry disguises, make up and blushes of weird colours. They were also hairpieces, a wooden leg, wax and tweezers, everything you would need to disguise the worst wolf into the softer lamb – or softer idiot.

He explained to me the basis of VFD disguises, namely three steps. Put make up on or warp your face, in a word, make yourself unrecognizable, never use the same disguise twice and alter or modify your voice. I deduced a fourth one from my experience with Volunteers and Arsonists, that is the most grotesque or pitiful the disguise, the better. As far as I'm concerned, I never managed to apply this rule correctly.

Anyway. He gave me piles of clothes that apparently used to belong to his sister, but were supposed to fit me. In the list of Jacques' various talents, his eye was probably the most important and it included his aesthetic eye. He gave me a burgundy suit, oval glasses without correction and put a platinum blond wig on my head. He taught me, while he did it, to put make up so that I looked ten years older, and more importantly, so that I no longer looked like my father.

Once my transformation done, I wasn't Cassandre Dupin anymore but Andrea Creta, a shady journalist of twenty-five seeking money and adventure from the man Jacques called Count Olaf.

"Don't talk about VFD," he recommended as I was doing my make up for the firth time. "Don't talk about the sugar bowl, your house's fire and don't…

\- Jacques, I get it. I don't talk about anything that could make him suspicious." I sighed. "How am I supposed to get information about my father if I can't even talk about it?

\- Spy on him. If you do what he asks, he'll lower his guard and will talk more freely. He's an infamous alcoholic, just get him…"

He bluntly stopped, doubtful. Disturbed. Back then it greatly annoyed me. Jacques' doubt regarding my abilities hurt me and got under my skin – I wasn't a child, I didn't need to be protected. But  _I was_  a child and  _I needed_  to be protected. Do you know any kid of nineteen that would agree, though?

"Cassandre, I don't know. I really don't. You're young, your father…

\- My father has been abducted," I retorted. "His opinion does not matter.

\- It does. Your father wouldn't want you to take such risks to find him. You don't know who you're talking about.

\- Because you know? If you did, you would have found my father."

He shook his head and accepted his defeat. Again. I was unfair, I was cruel but that's all I was able to be. I needed to act and he didn't want to let me. He could just mind his own business, I didn't ask anything from him. Nothing.  _At all._

If anyone had told me that Jacques would soon become the only man in my life – well, the only one other than my father, I would have died laughing. He was but an adult unable to do anything and unwilling to see what I could do. People change. And I wasn't, and still am not, an exception to this rule. Quite the contrary.

"Promise me something, Cassandre.

\- Name it," I whined. "As long as I can go.

\- Don't let him woo you. Others than you got their fingers burnt.

\- Jacques…

\- Promise me."

Ha, all these promises I made. I was piling them, not realizing that I wouldn't be able to keep so many conflicting promises. I couldn't save my father, the Baudelaire, make sure they were fine, protect the sugar bowl and still be a naïve and innocent child all at once. Can you blame a child of nineteen for believing she would never change? So I promised, because I didn't have the choice, because I didn't understand the scope of this promise and maybe mainly because I was writhing in anticipation.

"I promise I won't become one of them. Satisfied?

\- As long as you keep this promise," he sighed with a distant voice. "Fine. I get it, you want to go. Be careful. Leave me notes in one those dead drops."

He handed me a list of places that I stuffed in my notebook without reading it. He smiled and, quite clumsily, hugged me, perhaps more for himself than for me. I put a hand on his shoulder and let him do it, more because I had to than by will. I wanted to go and if it meant handling a worried guy's guilt, so be it.

When he released me, he wished me luck and tell me where I was supposed to go. He called a taxi and asked him to wait around the nearest park and finally let me go. I waved at him, threw my back on my shoulder and left smiling.  _God, how stupid I was._ I didn't have the slightest idea I had just step on a slippery slope I would  _never_  be able to leave. Or climb back.


	6. Lie 5 : He didn't touch me

**Lie 5 : He didn't touch me.**

I don't want to detail everything I did with Olaf – everything going from chasing the Baudelaire to work as an ophthalmologist assistant to trap them. I only had a very subordinate role in this, namely recount all his troop's adventures to the Daily Punctilio in place of true journalists. The objective was  _of course_  to cover his back every time his plans failed. And believe me, they kept on failing.

Jacques obviously gave me everything I needed to make my articles useful to the Volunteers. I used each and every codes I knew, every ways and means to hide messages in innocent sentences, everything to make sure the organization knew everything that happened. I already said Jacques was an incredibly good and incredibly noble man – but all his goodness prevented him from being strategic. Because theses codes were used by  _every_ Volunteers, Olaf included. But he forgot to tell me – so that my only luck in this was that he  _didn't read_  the newspapers.

The fact remains that I covered his disastrous adventures and shaky plans so much that he ended up seeing me as a rather useful tool. A bit of efforts, alcohol and…  _Rapprochement_  were enough to be considered a true ally. And even if he was despicable – still is, if he's alive, I was more than aware that I was lucky to count him as my friend, and not as my foe, though my list of enemies was nowhere close to the one I have today. Of course, being considered as an ally also meant my leg was stuck in a bear trap that could close very,  _very_  easily but to be honest, my pride was such that I was simply unable to realize it. Pride that, rather ironically, wasn't dented at all by everything I had done to get closer. All I did was getting information for Jacques.

And each time I came back home, only seldom given Olaf's comings and goings, he listened to me as he would have listened to the messiah. It may sound stupid, and truly it was, but it felt like I mattered.  _I was dead,_ remember: I didn't have any existence but the one I was given by the people I was around. The disguise I wore, the role I played with Olaf and his fellows was one existence. The true Cassandre, at least what looked like it less and less, was the one I saw in Jacques' eyes. And what I saw reminded me that I was searching for my father and I was a good person, on the right side of the Schism. Later on, what I saw would remind me that I didn't have any father anymore and that I was no longer a good person.

Back then, I still was. I liked to believe I was anyway, even if I was involved more or less directly with Josephine Anwhistle's death and the Baudelaire's umpteenth escape to the Lucky Smells Lumbermill. I don't need to write down these events, another did it better and with more proves and documents than I ever had. Back then, I said, I really thought I had no blood on my hand. I only got involved with the organization, not the events. Even when they directly hurt the Baudelaire, I found comfort in the idea that they were not safe where they were anyway if it could happen. Jacques never talked about it – I thought it was only  _collateral damages._ That my more or less physical and more or less objectionable (more than less, in both cases) efforts were not this important. In fact, he just blinded himself and I didn't help him otherwise.

But I had information and it's all that mattered. Olaf didn't have my father anymore, obviously, and he'd gone back to his initial captor.  _"I had better things to do than baby-sitting a converted Volunteer,"_ he told me, completely drunk and slumped on the other side of the sofa we both collapsed on.  _"He didn't have the sugar bowl anyway."_  No shit. But anyway, its captors – since Olaf never mentioned their names, wanted him out of the town as soon as possible and they would use the In Auction to do so in a few weeks.

"We need to get ready," I told Jacques as I was removing my make up and getting my wig off. "He will use one of the batch to…

\- Cassandre, Cassandre, easy would you? We can't just interrupt the Auction and buy every batch hoping to find your father.

\- That's not what I said.

\- That's what you suggested."

I wasn't fair with him. He spread the information I gathered to every Volunteers he knew to organize my father's rescue. All I saw was that I was doing all the work while he all he did were useless shadowing and writing empty Dispatches. My ego, flattered by Olaf and my successes, flirted with arrogance almost eighty-five per cent of my time and I terribly lacked tactic.

"You talked about a building, the 667 Dark Avenue," I retorted without looking at him, focused on my cleanup. "Jerome Sa… Se…

\- Jerome Squalor. He is not a Volunteer, his flat was only useful because it was linked to the Baudelaire's house.

\- If I was sequestering a man and I absolutely wanted to keep him out of the world's awareness, I would use this passage. Especially if its owner knows nothing about it."

This time, I raised my eyes. He was close to me, arms crossed, and stared at me. My point hit the mark, I knew it from the ways his lips were pursed and his eyebrow furrowed. He was thinking – or investigating, since he was an investigator. I was finally able to retrieve my true face and grabbed more neutral clothes than those I was wearing to change. I was used to do it in the middle of the flat – though it didn't mean much, given its ridiculous size, partly because Jacques wasn't there most of the time.

But I understood quite quickly that it was not an excellent idea when I heard him clear his throat and when I saw him ostensibly turn away. I wasn't even naked, I was still wearing my underwear, but a bit of redness came to my cheeks and I pretended I was so very interested by the dirty windows in front of me. I must admit that the first thing I felt was satisfaction, but then I realized the way he looked at me wasn't a friendly way, or any way suitable for a man of my father's age. The silent that lingered was heavy, rather embarrassing and  _very_  hard to break. It took me all my confidence to continue.

"Anyway, you need to reach this guy before Olaf and the others find the idea interesting.

\- Jerome will contact us himself if a bunch of armed and unknown people barge in his flat.

\- They won't barge in armed," I sighed as if it was obvious. "We're talking about Olaf.

\- Of course, I almost forgot you're his new best friend."

I was packing my stuff and I remember I stopped, frozen, and kept the chest half-open for long seconds, before I finally closed it and turned to him. I said it, Jacques  _never_  spoke about what I did with Olaf.  _Never._ And each time he could have, he simply didn't.

The truth is that I feared this moment, because I knew that would mean that my two lives could collide. And because that would mean that I would have to face my incoherencies. So I stared at him, dead in the eyes, hoping to discourage him. Because of course, a kid of barely twenty was going to intimidate a Volunteer twice her age.

"What do you mean?

\- I don't know. What do you understand?

\- I don't like this, Jacques," I groaned. "You're not with me in there.

\- No and that's apparently a good thing because I wouldn't be as productive as you are." He frowned. Even more. "And I wouldn't be able to predict a villain like Olaf's actions, for lack of knowing him well enough. But it doesn't sound like an issue for you."

This is one of those episodes I look back to, wondering what would have happened if I had done something else. Of course, there are all these instances when I said I didn't have the sugar bowl. But this episode is of another stature. If I had not slapped Jacques, and accepted I was going too far with Olaf, maybe he wouldn't have stopped me from going back to him – but maybe everything that followed would have been different. He would have kept an eye on me, would have prevented me from doing a great deal of the things that led me, well, to what I am today, and maybe he would even be still alive to remind me how bad I screwed up back then.

But I did slap him. Violently. That was so violent and so sudden that he didn't have time to react or understand what was going on. In the blink of an eye, he had my hand's red imprint of his cheeks and a haggard look on his face. And I ? Well, I was staring.  _And still I thought I was a good person back then._ He was looking at him as if he couldn't even get grasp of what used happened. Can't blame him, I'm not certain I knew myself. But his face quickly change to take this… This expression that almost had me terrified. A mix of anger and disgust that immediately nailed me down to earth and made me realize what I did.

"So this is how he influences you?" He shook his head. "I should have never let you go.

\- You just called me a slut. You thought I would just accept it?

\- It's only an insult if it's true.

\- I did what I had to do!" I turned away, far enough to make sure he wouldn't slap me back. "We needed intel, Jacques. We know my father is nearby, not matter how I…

\- That's the problem, Cassandre. It does matter."

And his face went back to what I was used to – a hangdog look. Sad. My heart tightened when I understood a part of the trust he put in me just exploded, and I gritted my teeth. It was my fault, after all. As much as I willingly slapped me, I willingly got Olaf drunk and, for good measure, willingly drunk with him. And as much as I willingly got a monster drunk, I willingly followed him to his bed. The mere thought of it, at this point, looked absolutely dreadful. Now I just remember it as one of the dozen mistakes I made. Not the first, not the last, and absolutely not the worst.

Then again I made a horrible choice. Maybe the worst of my life and his. Olaf had taught me many things, amongst which the fact that I was not as righteous as I thought I was, and the fact that I was an excellent liar. He told me I could and had to develop this  _gift._ And I couldn't letJacques think that I had turned into a slut – no, I just couldn't. Everything but his disappointment.  _Everything_  but his disgusted look. So I sighed, lowered my eyes, and did exactly what it often takes to manipulate a man: I cried.

"I'm sorry, Jacques," I whispered. I wasn't entirely lying. "I didn't want… I overreacted, but with everything that's going on, my father and everything, I just can't be calm. I don't want you to think I…

\- Cassandre…"  _And it worked._ He was panicking. "Listen, I…

\- No you're right. I crossed the line with Olaf. But I wanted to go good, I wanted to track my father and the sugar bowl and…" And there I lied. Completely. "He didn't touch me. Never."

Strangely enough, now that I think of it, the lie was worst than the act itself. At first looked extremely uncomfortable, but it eyes told a great deal of what he thought.  _He was relieved._ The mere thought broke my heart again and I rushed in his arms. He closed them around my back and held me against him. And I closed my eyes, trying to forget what I just said.

It's not that sleeping with a man like Olaf is a shame – although it could be considered as such. But if only it'd been  _just_  for intel, it would have been fine, though still morally dubious. But it wasn't just for that, and never was.

Jacques is the love of my life. He was the love of my life when I met him, when he died, would be until I die. He's the ideal I never reached, the ideal I disappointed – he represents my every failure. But there was Olaf before him, and Olaf after him. His tale is not the place to explain it and even if I did, no one would understand. I don't understand. All I know is that Jacques kept alive a part of me that would have died way soon if not for him. The other part is the one that loved, not sure the word is even correct, and still do in a way, a monster.  _The part that failed him._


	7. Lie 6 : I should stay

**Lie 6 : I should stay.**

It's a little weird to go from a dispute to what I'm going to write, but I can't do much about it. The fact remains that after this episode, I spent a long time with Jacques, gathering as much as information as possible regarding my father's transfer. Given the result of the whole thing, I doubt it was worth all the efforts we put in it - but anyway.

Since I had begun to work with Olaf, I hadn't spent much time with him. And coming back felt good. Jacques liked my comments, valued my opinion even when he disagreed – and it was often. And now that the Olafian issue was settled, he wasn't as hesitating and tensed as before, when we talked about the clues I picked up with him. So we spent most of our time speaking about them, dissecting them, making sense of them and taking notes of everything.

Well, to be honest, our long discussions always ended up revolving around less formal matters, usually around midnight. That's when he told me he had a brother and a sister, though I would meet them only later. He also taught me the actual procedure to become a Volunteer – the Valorous Farm Dairy, the Mortmain Mountains HQ, its library, all those things that, back then, had me dreaming. And now, even if the first one still remains, as far as I know, the second one is but a memory. Sometimes I'm happy Jacques isn't there to witness the violent demise of the places he held so dear.

Those conversations helped me understand him. His idealism, his genuine love for the organization, his faith in its members, his hope that the Schism would eventually be settled. And it was so different from what obscured my mind that I could only love this side of him. It's also at this point that I completely forgot he was my father's age – and he probably forgot I could have been his daughter.

But those long days couldn't last forever. I was already receiving news from Olaf asking me to come back. I had to leave our shelter and go back to my second life. And this perspective didn't bring joy to Jacques. At all. Each time I spoke about it, he changed the subject or pretended he was busy. I won't ever say it enough: he didn't know how to lie, nor did he know how to hide his thoughts. I found it quite flattering that he wanted to keep me, granted, but still this little game could only go so far.

I prepared my suitcase while he was busy meeting a Volunteer. Well, in fact it was  _his_  suitcase. I borrowed it when I needed it. An old leathered suitcase, the kind you only see in movies. Strangely enough, it didn't smell dust or old times – it didn't smell anything. It was quite confusing, at first. I got used to it.

I was putting my glasses on the top of the pile of clothes in the suitcase when he got back. He wasn't supposed to be this early – I never knew why he came back before he was supposed to. Maybe he had one of those investigator's forebodings? I doubt it. If he had some, I don't think he ever had any concerning me, or everything that happened wouldn't have… Happened. At least not this way. I pretended I didn't hear him and finished to pack my stuff. Slowly, quietly, he came closer and put himself between me and  _his_  suitcase. When I said he put himself, I mean he  _pushed me_  away from it, as it was going to explode.

"What are you doing?

\- I prepare my stuff," I replied calmly. "I told you I had to do it a dozen of times.

\- You don't need to go.

\- I do. Jacques, are we really going to have this conversation?"

I raised my eyes and stared at him. They were pleading – as always. I gritted my teeth and tilted my head, unyielding. I  _had_  to go. Did I want to? A bit, I must say. Did I want to leave him? No, not really. But lately it wasn't about what I wanted, rather what I had to do. I tried to go back where I was. He grabbed my arm and kept me away from the suitcase.

And he stared. He stared. He stared. Just in case I'm not clear enough, I'm trying to say  _he stared_  a long time. Very long time, without a word. His look had changed. It wasn't pleading – it was confident. I sighed. I didn't know what was going on in his head. Maybe it was better off this way, I would have panicked.

"You don't need to go," he repeated. The precision he added didn't sound so important right away – I was such an idiot. "Not tonight. You can wait until tomorrow.

\- I don't see why I would wait. I'd lose time.

\- Cassandre, please."

I didn't really have much chances to see men begging me – it happened, but it happened this way only twice. Each time it was a Snicket, and each time in the same circumstances or so. Dumbfounded by the tone he used, I looked away for a second. Enough for him to get closer until I raised them again. His eyes were not begging – his beautiful green eyes were staring with confidence. Well, a tiny bit of pleading was still there, but less than his voice suggested. His beautiful green eyes that would haunt me until I leave this godforsaken world.

"Jacques, I don't have the choice.

\- You'll leave. Not tonight.

\- I don't have…

\- I can give you a reason to stay."

Looking back, when I play this scene again and again, I can't help thinking that if I'd left anyway, I would have spared us pain, a lot of tears and perhaps I would have spared his life. But I was alone, lost, desperate and young. And he was all I had left. He was my only safe place and my last hope. He saved my life and still saved it every days that passed. He valued me the way no one valued me before. He looked at me the way no one ever looked at me. And in the shades of the room, he was handsome, and tall, and strong and he looked at me with such  _sadness_  that I simply couldn't move.

I should have stopped him, perhaps merely because he was my father's age, but when he leaned toward me to kiss me, I couldn't move either. Because for the first time in ages, I felt like I was where I was supposed to be. Because it didn't have anything to do with Olaf – no, nothing. There was no violence, his hands around my arms would have released me if I had moved. It was Jacques. He would have  _never_  been able to hurt me. And I was  _never_ able to spare him.

"Forgive me," he sighed, stepping back, suddenly guilty. "I shouldn't have. It was stupid. And selfish.

\- You're not stupid. And not selfish." I grabbed his arms too to stop him from leaving. "And it was not stupid. And not selfish.

\- You should go.

\- No," I retorted with a smile. "No, I think I should stay."

And I was wrong, or at least, that's what I like to believe. In fact, I wouldn't have  _anything_  else than what happened. His kiss, his caresses, the night we spent together. The tacit promises that I ended up breaking. The silent hopes that I also broke. No, not anything, even the possibility of not living them and, as a logical consequence, not causing this wonderful man's death.

Yes, that's what I became. I still repeat that Jacques Snicket was the love of my life and that his death broke me, but I'd still be incapable of exchanging a night for his life. It would be laughable, if it didn't make me cry. But this night… There's not word to describe what it represents. It's my lighthouse, like Beatrice's memory is yours, Lemony. When I'm lost in the dark, I remember it and I remember I wasn't always a ruin. And I remember that perhaps there's still hope for me to be the woman Jacques loved this night. It's a lie. A fantasy, but who are you to blame me?

This night was the last time Cassandre Dupin was really honest with anyone. No I'm not turning crazy, speaking about myself using the third person – it's just that  _this_  Cassandre was soon to die. You'll see. I won't ruin the suspense.

God, I loved him.  _I still do._ I justify myself way too much in this chapter, but I need to tell myself that all these things, all it triggered, was justified.

And Jacques was gentle, so gentle, and it's a gentleness I can't imagine possible anymore. And still I didn't find sleep in his arms, lying naked against him. I heard his breath going deeper and deeper, slower and slower as he fell asleep, but I couldn't. I was staring at the roof above us.

I felt incredibly good, but I hurt.  _It hurt._ I knew it was a mistake. The worst in this, was that I was eager to repeat it. Because even if it hurt, I felt so incredibly good. I felt light. I felt fine, so fine. Too fine.

You want to know what's the worst? He wasn't sleeping. He was pretending – I know because he held me tighter when he realized my wide eyes were still staring at the roof. And what he whispered in my ear still echoes today in the few dreams I manage to have – at least, those that don't end up being a nightmare.

"You're safe," he sighed with a sleepy voice. "With me, you're safe. When you find your father, everything will be over. I promise." Another promise. Another lie. "Trust me.

\- I trust you."

That was true. It still is.


	8. Lie 7 : I'm getting you out of here

**Lie 7 : I'm getting you out of here**

I didn't miss the Prufrock's episode, in case you're wondering. More precisely, I  _knew_  the Baudelaire were there but only discovered later on what happened. But the whole time they spent between this  _venerable_  institution's walls, I was preparing the operation I'm going to tell you about.

Well, no. I won't indulge in a delirium of details – if you want them, just ask those who were there. Honestly, I won't dwell at length about this kind of things. This day was the worst of my life, the kind I want to forget at once. So it deserves better. What I can tell you, though, is that the Baudelaire were at the Auction at this point, busied with their own problems. Problems I completely ignored, back then. I didn't know anything about the Quagmire triplets, even if I would be  _lucky enough_  to meet one of them soon. And I didn't know that I could have, by mere minutes, saved Isadora and Duncan from their plight. Truth be told, even if I'd known, I don't think I would have cared.

I needed to act fast. My father's transfer was to take place at the end of the Auction and, when I reached the 667 Dark Avenue, it was just beginning. I could have used the secret passage of the Baudelaire's house, but Jacques feared it would be blocked and I would lose time. So I entered the residence using the main door. I recognised the janitor – he was the Hook-Handed man, one of Olaf's fellows. I had planned this much. I was dressed-up and disguised accordingly. It took him a second to recognize me.

"Andrea? Is that you?

\- It's me, indeed," I sighed with Andrea Cretan's famous composure. "Olaf told me to have a look at Dupin.

\- He didn't tell me.

\- He just told me. Can I go or do I need to beg you?"

I frowned. I wasn't in the mood of discussion and I was  _in a hurry._ I sighed an infuriated sigh and he finally walked away, hesitating. He was suspicious.  _I didn't have the time for that,_ but I didn't know whether or not cover would be of any use after at. I  _couldn't_  abandon or sabotage it. I rolled my eyes.

"You'll ask Olaf when we meet him after the Auction if you want.

\- It's not that I don't trust you," he sighed. "But he told me someone was supposed to come and pick him up.

\- I'm not picking him up.

\- That's the issue.

\- Are you  _really_  discussing the boss' orders?"

This argument. Always hit the mark when it's about some stupid sycophant henchman. He shook his head vigorously. I nodded with a smile and walked to the elevator – yes, I know, it wasn't In but I  _could care less._ My ascent was quite fast and, and, once I'd reached the top floor, I walked to the second door. " _You'll have to climb,"_ Jacques had told me. I had everything ready: ropes in my bag, good shoes on my feet. I took a deep breath and opened the doors. The gap beneath my feet looked like it was dragging me in and it took me a few tries to finally decide to get down.

Once my rope tied around the stair's railing, I released the door of the empty shaft and took another deep breath. I was going to go down when I heard the other elevator's doors opening. I froze and saw  _the guy_  mentioned by Fernald Widdershins – even if I didn't his name back then. And he saw me too.

I don't want to go into details. All you need to know is that we fought, I stabbed him in the stomach with  _his_ knife when he pushed me in the empty elevator shaft,  _my_  knife in  _my_ shoulder and that I would probably have died if I didn't have the foresight to grab my rope as soon as possible. Instead, I managed to slow down my fall (burning my two hands' palms) and land  _almost_  smoothly on the shaft's ground.

By the way, I have no idea how I didn't bleed out from this point to when I left, really. Adrenaline, probably, or whatever hormones rushing in my veins. Hormone that wore out as soon as I saw my father behind the bars of the cell, in front of me.

"Dad?" I squeaked, both because it hurt and because I couldn't believe he was there. "Dad, is that you?

\- Cassandre?"

His hoarse voice sounded as painful as mine. I got closer, my hand on my wound to try not to lose whatever remained of my blood. I was covered with it – even if it wasn't only mine. It wasn't mostly mine, to be honest. This detail will soon be important. One of the many instances where things could have easily been  _very different._ If I hadn't gutted this guy, for example. Anyway.

I had my picking tools – thanks, Olaf, and a headlamp to shine some light in this hellhole – thanks, Jacques. Once the cell's door opened, I rushed to my father and, despite the pain, held me against me. He whined. He was hurt. Grievously hurt, looking back. He was covered with dry and fresh blood and his clothes were soaked in it. But stupid as I was, I thought it was an old wound.  _Nope._

"Dad, I'm getting you out of here. Can you stand up?

\- What are you doing here, Cassandre?" This calm, always this calm, even in an emergency situation. This righteous tone. "And… What is…

\- Don't worry, I dressed up to make sure I wouldn't be spotted. We'll speak about it later, we need to go. You…

\- Why are you covered with blood?"

He didn't move.  _And wouldn't._ I sighed and took my wigs and glassed away. I swept my face with my sleeve to take as much make up as possible away. He stared at me with confused eyes for a while, but then his face turned into something I had never seen before. And still the last thing I would ever see from him.

I said it, my father never screamed. Never argued. Never got angry. And nothing ever disgusted him, nothing scared him, nothing reached him. And still, before my eyes, his face was nothing but anger. Disgust. Fear. As if I wasn't his daughter anymore but a monster. A true monster. Confused myself, I released his shoulders and shook my head.

"What? I fought, it's not…

\- Your blood ?" His voice was harsh.  _It'd never been._ But it would only this until the end. "It's you. Olaf's Andrea. That's how you manage to come here.

\- I'm not with him, dad, I just needed to get close…

\- You helped him. You  _killed_  Josephine Answhistle.

\- Of course not!

\- But you were there!"

He was screaming. At last he was screaming. As loud as he could. I must say that the only thing I managed to think about was that we didn't have time for this. I didn't realize I had already lost my father. He, on the other hand, understood it very clearly. And he wasn't sparing himself. Wouldn't spare me. His eyes had turned accusing, nasty.  _This man does not look like my father,_ I thought. And still he was my father.

"I  _told you_  to mind the eyes," he groaned, holding onto his stomach. "I told you I found find you.

\- And I promised I would find you!

\- And that's the way you keep your promise? By  _killing? Betraying?_ Do you even know what Olaf did?

\- I wanted to save you!" My voice was on the verge of hysteria.  _I_  was on the verge of hysteria. "I'll explain everything, I promise but…

_\- I promise._ "

He mimicked me, bitterly. I stood still, frozen, my shoulders sorer and sorer and my thought going blurrier every seconds that went. I didn't understand. Rather, I refused to understand – because everything was very clear.

I don't know how to write what happened afterward. I don't even know if I  _want_  to write it. No one knows all that, I never told anyone. Not even my dear old friend Lemony (I know you'll read this sooner or later). Not even Jacques before he died. No one. It was too hard. It's still too hard. My father's look, the disgust in his eyes, his face distorted by pain and anger, the way he was staring at me… It's all a nightmare I do again and again every night, even when I think I fell asleep, but realize I am denied this privilege. And his voice, his innuendos, every he said still echoes in my head…

"I can't believe they have you.

\- They don't have me! I was searching for you with Jacques Snicket, I'm on the right side of the Schism!

\- You know nothing of the Schism," he spat out. Literally, he was spitting blood as he spoke. "And you know nothing of the "right side" of the Schism. The "right side" of the Schism doesn't kill people. It doesn't help Olaf. It doesn't help this side of the Schism. Don't you recall anything I taught you?

\- You never told me about VFD! You hid the sugar bowl from me, you…

\- You have the sugar bowl?"

I suddenly stopped and, without even realizing it, I took out the bowl from my bag. It was wrapped in several pieces of clothing. He stared at it and stretched out his hand. I took it away from him and stepped back. And the flames in his eyes danced again. I was protecting the sugar bowl since the beginning, and I still didn't know what was inside – I never opened it, never doubted my father's intentions. But now I doubted.

I recalled what I learnt. I recalled the teachers and their weird lessons. All those things I learnt to do. Write backward, speak all these languages, those ancient codes, and this golden rule.  _Never hurt anyone._ And this trip we were supposed to do – trip that should have begun my apprenticeship under the direction of no else than Kit Snicket. It all made sense, except the last part I knew nothing about.

"You can't keep it.

\- Why? I protected it for months.

\- It's not safe in your hands," he retorted. Not the final blow, but almost. "Give it to me.

\- No. I know how to protect it.

\- You kept it around Olaf, you don't know how to protect it. You don't know how to protect anything.

\- Then I'm like you. You didn't know how to protect me either."

All these inconsistent feelings I felt until this moment – frustration from not knowing VFD, anger from understanding nothing, fear, anguish, every thing came out in this single sentence uttered without any life, any tone. The final blow came at this point, this point when my father replied. I'm scared to write it. Until now, it was only words, sounds. And you can forget sounds. Words on a paper…

"You're not like me. You were never like me." It wasn't the final blow. "You're not my daughter.

\- Dad….

\- My daughter no longer exists. I don't know what you became, Cassandre, if you're this Andrea or if you lost yourself, but  _my daughter_  never killed anyone, even indirectly.  _My daughter_ never followed Olaf.  _My daughter_  wouldn't be covered with blood.

\- Dad, please, I can't…

\- I'm not your father anymore."

Not  _I'm not your father._ No.  _I'm not your father_ _ **anymore**_ _._  My throat tightened to the point where I could barely breathe. I felt tears choking me. I lost myself – I did, but for him. All I did, all I accepted to do, was for him. All I lost, I lost it for him. All the blood on my hand was for him. For a father who was  _not my father anymore._

I closed my eyes for a second. It's ludicrous, a horrible cliché, but for me it's the truth. My father broke me. If he hadn't told me these horrors, maybe there would still be hope for Cassandre Dupin, for  _his_  daughter and the woman Jacques loved. But he ruined this hope in a few words. He finished what I'd begun. He pushed me on the other side better than Olaf. And no one would ever retrieve me. Not even Jacques. Not even you, Lemony. So I stared at him and my eyes were not blurry anymore.

And I saw the wound on his stomach, this dreadful, gurgling abyss. My father was dying – I wouldn't have been able to get him out of here. And I didn't want to. I wanted this man who  _was not my father anymore_ to die. So I took the knife that used to be in my shoulder, and that fell with me. And I stared at this man who _was not my father anymore_ in the eyes. He didn't blink. He didn't move. I think he understood that I  _wasn't his daughter anymore_  either.

"I thought I could," he said with a strong, yet already weakened voice. "I thought I could stop you from following her example.

\- Whose example?

\- But felony runs in your blood." He wasn't listening. He probably didn't hear anything. "And felony always wins."

_Felony always wins._ Of everything my father told me in this elevator shaft, it's probably the only thing that still makes sense today. When I stood up, my father's blood was mixed with the guy from upstairs' and mine. I could feel tears running down my face, ruining what remained of my make up. And the only thing I could see, I could think of, was the body lying in front of me.

I stepped back and realized the ground was covered with some sort of dry straw, barely moistened by the blood dripping from my wound. The passage to the Baudelaire's house was open nearby. The door was open. I had to leave – I had to. Olaf's henchmen were on their way. The Arsonists were on their way.  _The Arsonists are on their way._

I burst out laughing, completely alone. A hysterical, maniac laugh. Terrifying, I suppose. There was a box of matches in my bag and nothing in my mind stopped me from lighting them. I lighted two of them. I threw one on the straw. I threw the other one on my father. And I watched the flames slowly eating away his clothes, the straw on the floor. And just like I did back home, I watched, fascinated, the flames destroying what remained of my life.

Some say I crossed the line of the Schism this day. That's what Jacques thought. For others, I was doomed from the beginning – that's what my father thought, even if I doubt he would have appreciated the irony of ending up in ashes. To be honest, I disagree with both statements. I was dancing on the line since the beginning. This day, I simply made the first of a dozen mistakes I would do on the Arsonists' side. But something is certain: I lighted my first fire this day.

When I struggled my way out of the passage in the Baudelaire's house's ruins, Jacques was already there. I lost consciousness in his arms, once again, and he brought me to safety. Again. The last picture I remember from this doomed day is the dark smoke in the sky above me, the flames that licked the other buildings and my reflection in Jacques' eyes when he forced me to turn away. Or, rather, my lack of reflection – I couldn't see myself. Maybe it was blood loss, maybe it was tears, maybe both but I couldn't see myself in his eyes.

But it was adequate. The Volunteer Cassandre Dupin died this day with the man who _wasn't her father anymore._ The one who walked out the 667 Dark Avenue's flames wasn't a Volunteer anymore - if she'd ever been. And she had started her first fire.


	9. Lie 8 : I'm not an arsonist

**Lie 8 : I'm not an Arsonist**

It's been almost three months since the last time I wrote anything. In my defence, I was quite busy hiding from a bunch of hungry lions – yes, lions. But anyway, the present is not the point of this tale. And I realized I left huge grey areas. It's barely articulated, so if I allow myself such vagueness, I'm going to lose everyone.

I talked about Olaf, but never really told you any memory I have with him. Just to be clear, I don't  _want_  to do it, but if this bunch of pages is supposed to constitute some sort of defence to the petty accusations I already face (not all of them are petty though), then I have to do it. It's pointless to go back to our meeting – the Daily Punctilious already wrote about it anyway.

No, I think the most interesting thing to do is to go back to the moment when he realized I wasn't  _exactly_ on his side. Well, he did also understand that I wasn't on the other side either, but it's a detail. The fact remains that it happened in the very short but paradoxically very busy period of time between the 667 Dark Avenue's fire and the events of the Village of Fowl Devotees – I'll come back to it later, it's too important for it not to be the object of a  _whole_  chapter.

Once back on my feet,  _well, back on my feet,_ from the disaster that was my father's rescue, I needed to distance myself from Jacques. I hadn't told him anything, he didn't know I set the building on fire. He didn't even suspect it, to be honest. Our relationship didn't suggest I was able of such a thing. Or rather, nothing could make him suspicious. But anyway, I needed fresh air so I left for a few days.

_No,_ fresh air didn't mean cheat on Jacques. I had no intention to. And spoiler alert, it didn't happen. Not  _really_  anyway. I was in a motel, nearby in the hinterlands. I had no plan. My mind was still too blurry from what happened with my father. I spent most of my days staring at the sugar bowl in front of me, wondering what was inside. I never went out – I know, logical when you're supposed to  _need fresh air._

I don't know how he found me. I'm almost certain the motel's owner was one of his allies, but never proved it. Mostly because he died before I seriously considered the question. I was writing a few notes on the famous  _example_  I was following according to my  _late_  father when I heard knocking. Quickly but without haste, I stuffed the sugar bowl deep in my bag and walked to the door.

No need to keep the suspense alive. It was Olaf. Alone, without his troop. They were waiting outside, but anyway. I stayed still for a while. I didn't have time to put make-up on – the floor had creaked under my feet and I wasn't even trying to be discreet. He knew I was there. He was waiting, more or less patiently, for me to open the door. I could have jumped down the window but he had planned it (thus the presence of his troop outside). I could have pretended to be dead, but he would have kicked the door open. Out of spite and because I wasn't in a normal state, I simply opened.

And I faced him as Cassandre. His pupils narrowed and a nasty smiled distorted his lips. Truly, Olaf wasn't  _handsome._ He could be charming – and he is, though only seldom, but he is not handsome. He would need to take better care of himself for that and it's just not him. Or maybe he's simply not made for personal hygiene, who knows? Anyway. You're not reading this for gross details regarding Count Olaf.

"Olaf," I let out blankly. "What happy occasion brings you here?

\- I think you owe me a few explanations,  _Andrea._

\- No, I don't think I do."

He pushed me to enter and closed the door behind him. I let him do it, arms crossed. Well, very honestly, if I had to do it again I would react a bit more. Everything could have happened at this point. But I think I was expecting quite  _everything._ I had killed my father less than a week before, set fire to a building full of people – I never said I had warned anyone, did I? Truth be told, most of them managed to get out.  _Most._ Really, if he'd killed me, it would have made an incredible amount of people's lives easier. Never mind.

"A  _Volunteer_ ," he spat out, looking around. "Who taught you how to dress up?

\- You  _really_  think I'm telling you?

\- A Snicket, of course." We can say a lot of things about Olaf, but he has a hell of a gut feeling. Or a shameful luck. "You really think your cover wouldn't fall after your exploit in the 667 Dark Avenue?

\- By exploit, you mean the part when I stabbed one of your men in the guts or you're doing a metaphor on the fire part?"

Metaphor was too much of a complex term for him, but I saw him frowning. He shut up and stopped walking around to stare at me and narrow his eyes, suspiciously. What was rather funny was that it took him more time than anyone else to accept the idea  _that I was involved in his plans._ He burst out laughing the usual way, the one that sounded more like dog barks more than human laugh, and shook his head.

"A Volunteer does not set a building on fire. Especially inhabited.  _Especially_  when her dear dad is inside.

\- True." I shrugged. "But you assume that I am a Volunteer. And that my dad opened wide his arms for me.

\- You're really trying to make me believe that daddy rejected his beloved daughter?" He rolled his eyes. "He whined for the  _whole trip_  that he would find you a way or another.

\- He came around when his beloved daughter came covered in blood."

He blinked and glanced at me again. He just realized there were bandages near my jumper's collar – the one that covered my shoulder's wound. I struggled moving it (I still do every so often), and I wasn't hiding it but he hadn't noticed until now. He kept quiet for a while and I could almost see the rusted gears turning in his brains to try to make sense of everything he saw and heard.

No, really, it still stuns me. It didn't take more than two seconds for Jacques to blame me for everything. My father didn't think about it for a second, and immediately knew who Andrea was. Lemony didn't even ask any question, it was obvious from the beginning that I was to blame for half of the last fires that burnt around. But Olaf couldn't believe it.

"You killed him?

\- I just said so, indeed.

\- A Volunteer…

\- Oh shit, Olaf," I groaned, annoyed. "How many times do I need to tell you?  _I'm not a Volunteer._ I wanted to find my father, it so happened that a Volunteer saved me from my house's fire, put me on your track and I decided to extort informations from you. But hey, too bad, dad didn't like the idea that I made friends with your side of Schism and literally sent me packing.

\- And you set fire to a building. And to your father.

\- Actually, it was my father  _and then_  the building."

My attempt to make a joke remained dead letter. He was staring at me, dumbfounded. Well, it only lasted a few seconds, enough time for a sardonic and satisfied smile to replace his surprise. He nodded and laughed again. Strangely enough, I also wanted to laugh.

What, you don't find my summary of the events hilarious?  _It's ludicrous. Absurd._ Everything I did to reach this hopeless result. I had forgotten the Baudelaire orphans – completely, I only remember they existed after Jacques' death. I was focused on my father's rescue, all this fuss to, indeed, set him on fire.  _Fuck._ It was hilarious.

"I don't know which Volunteer found you," he continued once calmed. "But I'm not sure he likes the idea.

\- Hmhm. Well, he has no idea.

\- So you're what, exactly? An informer? A double-agent?

\- I would need to be on one side of the Schism.

\- That's what your mother said, before you father killed her."

I did react. I blinked. He smiled even more. The arsehole knew that I didn't know – it was a secret. Most VFD members didn't know how my mother died. I doubt Jacques ever knew, by the way. I looked at Olaf without a word before he covered his distorted mouth with his  _innocent_  hand and exclaimed.

"You didn't know? My apologies, forget what I just said.

\- My father killed my mother?" My voice sounded distant. Quite like my mind. " _My father killed my mother?_

\- He didn't really appreciate her decision to work for herself and not for those stupid Volunteers. He appreciated even less her decision to follow the damned sugar bowl.

\- And how do you know all that?

\- I was there when she died."

His voice, completely unmoved, hid the truth better than his eyes. The night my mother died, I learnt it later, other people died. Olaf's parents. A simple way to daunt someone from playing with fire – the Schism, here.

Just to make sure, I am aware my mother wasn't a good person and that she probably deserved her death, at least in a way. But at this point, she still was this unknown face, this woman that was supposed to be dead in a  _car accident._ The shock was harsh enough to keep me quiet. And it gave plenty of time to Olaf to fill the silence and rub it in. His way to get revenge on me.

"You'll ask your friends what happened. Well, especially my  _dear_  Kit Snicket," he grinded. His smile was going to eat up his whole face. "She'll tell you about the poisoned darts, about Beatrice Baudelaire's pleasure when she planted it in your mother's neck and your father's relief when she finally died.

\- Well, I have murders in my genes then.

\- Yeah you can… Wait, what?"

He wasn't waiting for that  _at all._ His cruel smile, the delight in his voice, the sordid details he added to his story, all that was supposed to scare me. And disgust me. And break me. But I had stabbed my father in the stomach a week before, it was quite hard to disgust me. And you can't break what's broken, can you? And I wasn't really surprise, once the shock had vanished. Younger, I often wondered how my mother was, who she was. Every times I asked my father, his calms faltered and he tensed. He always found some banalities to say and changed the subject. No need to be a genius to understand their couple was going to the dogs when she died. With everything I had learned about my father and his involvement in VFD, learning that he had caused her death because she was on the wrong side of the Schism… One more revelation or one less, it didn't really matter.

Unconcerned, I looked at him. He looked back. And his smiled changed. From a sadistic glee, it went to something else. Content. Satisfaction. He turned away and got dangerously close to my bag. I kept my composure. If there was one thing he didn't know, it was that I had the sugar bowl. He looked outside and laughed again, but quietly.

"Well, congratulations, Cassandre," he finally said. "That was a beautiful fire.

\- Thanks.

\- Esme is furious. Your  _exploit_  made her unbearable and I am the one living with it.

\- If you only knew how much I don't care." I frowned. "About Esme and her In clothes turned to ashes.

\- Don't be jealous. I'll made use of your…  _Services._ "

His laugh lingered and he came closer to me. There was a world between the way Jacques walked close to me and the way he did. I almost thought he was going to stab me in the shoulder – the other one, to turn me into a cripple. Instead, he grabbed me by the shoulder – the wounded one, and pressed me against his lean chest. I restrained a yelp of pain and struggled to push him away. But whatever you can think of him, Olaf  _is_  strong. Strong enough to keep me in his hold, anyway.

I said I didn't cheat on Jacques. I didn't lie. When he pressed his lips against mine, I didn't react. I just took advantage of the situation to slip out of his grip and to the other side of the room. With a last laugh, he turned round and went back to the door.

"You're weren't so shy, last time.

\- I knew you would tell me everything I needed. It helps.

\- Say that a dozen of times," he declaimed, unlocking the door. "Maybe you'll believe it. Maybe you'll believe you didn't fall on my side, if you try hard enough.

\- I'm not an Arsonist."

He froze. It took him an eternity to turn his head and look at me above his shoulder. I think it's this face that haunted – and still haunts, the Baudelaire's sleep. This arched eyebrow above nasty, sly eyes. This cruel smile, full of fateful promises. It also haunts my sleep, in fact – but I asked for it more than they did.

"You may not be an Arsonist, but you started this fire. You killed those people. And you killed your father. So maybe you're not one of us… But you're definitely not a  _noble heart_."

I didn't have enough time to retort. He left exactly when he finished his sentence, and left me there, standing in a corner of the room. I don't know what I felt back then, apart from an unending emptiness. He hadn't said anything I had not already said to myself a hundred times. So I took my notebook, and answered my question.

The example my father talked about was my mother. A.B was my mother. In the end, all the mysteries I had written in my notebook were very simple since my mother was the answer to most of them. Pointless, you'd think, to write it in a damned notebook full of information about my dead father. You're probably right. But it's the only way I found to keep myself together.

This and, once the page completed, go back to Jacques. Just to believe for a few more days, precious days, that my heart was still noble. And forget what Olaf said. Enough time to hold him against me and forget the dancing flames in front of my eyes in the elevator shaft of the 667 Dark Avenue, the blood that dried on my hand and the pieces of my heart that I left there.  _And forget what Olaf said._

And I was right to do it. I only had a few days left with him – and then I would lose everything I had left in my life. Him.


	10. Lie 9 : I hate you

**Lie 9 : I hate you.**

I have no idea whether it's symbolic or simply awfully depressing that the worst moments of my life are so close in time. I almost want to lie and write something else before this one. But it would be useless and stupid – my goal is to make my point of view understandable. And distorting it more than it already is…

Anyway. We hid somewhere else and we'd taken Jacques' new best friend, Quigley Quagmire. I never talked to him, to be honest. The Baudelaire told me everything I know about it – and the files I read about their relationships. He was one of the Quagmire triplets, saved by his mother before guess what? Their house burnt to the ground. Since then, the two others were under Esme Squalor's tyranny and Quigley tried to survive the best he could. Jacques'd found him when he investigated Montgomery Montgomery's house, the Baudelaire's second guardian. And he brought him home like a stray dog.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the kid. He was a skilled mapmaker and the sketches he left saved me a couple times. It's just something in him… Anyway. Not the point. Now that my father's issue was settled, Jacques wanted to find Violet, Klaus and Sunny as soon as possible, and preferably  _before_  Olaf found them. Vain, you'd say. Well, yes, but we're speaking of Jacques, aren't we? As for me, I didn't mind helping them. I had promised them to find them, after all.

The problem was that we needed to go back to the beginning, to retrace their journey, followed them from their house to where they were now. Everything went relatively smoothly until we reached their last guardians – the Squalor. I tried to get myself out of this mess to make sure I wouldn't say anything wrong. Jacques worked alone on the fire reports and the police statements about the bodies found in the building. I don't even know how many people died in this damned fire.

I just came back from groceries – survival more than groceries, really, when I found out something was off. Quigley wasn't there. His maps, usually littering the floor and every flat furniture were mostly gone. I put my bag in the entrance, made sure I had my knife, Olaf's knife I mean. I walked to the room Jacques and I shared and found him sitting on the bed, deep in his reading of what looked like a file. Sighing in relief, I took out my coat and threw it on a chair with a smile.

"You scared me, where is Quigley?

\- I sent him away," he let out. "I needed space.

\- Oh alright, I'm leaving you then.

\- No, stay. I need your help."

That too was off. The way he gazed at me didn't look like anything I'd already seen from him. Or rather… Yes, it did look like something. It seems obvious now, but it was almost the same gaze as my father's when he understood I  _was_  Andrea. The thought sounded so ludicrous that it never crossed my mind. I thought he was tired, or stuck with some clues. So I sat next to him and looked at his file.

I didn't lose my smile when I realized it was the police file on the 667 Dark Avenue. Not just yet - after all, I was still free. No one knew about the two matches. I read what was written and my smile froze at this very moment. It turned into a grimace. It was written that the fire probably originated from the lift shaft and spread around in an unexplained way.  _It went up the rope,_ I guessed.  _And… Woosh._ Of course he noticed. He was waiting for something, anything. But at this point, I just looked up the papers and raised an eyebrow.

"You need my help with that? It's rather clear.

\- Yes but, you see, there're one or two dark spots and I can't get to… Shed some light on them, if you will." He paused and took the file back. And put it next to him, far from me. "You got out via the underground passage. You were in the lift shaft. And it's written that the fire started there.

\- I know how to read. What are you implying?"

I was tensed. That also he noticed. Don't worry, I learnt how to hide my physical reactions – and it's for the better. His green eyes stared at me without the slightest bit of understanding or forgiveness… Without any feeling, in fact. I'd already lost him. But you know the song: even when we know we've lost, we always try to find a way. Maybe I would have found one if I hadn't been this oblivious.

He stood up and paced back and forth. I stayed on the bed, motionless. It felt like my father's episode over again. And yes, the resemblance already stroke me. I took the file and read again this part of the file to try to find this way. If I'm there, writing you those words, you know I didn't.

"I don't know. What do you understand?

\- You're blaming me for the fire," I said cautiously. "But you're the investigator, not me.

\- It's always been a possibility. I thought about it but obviously forgot it right away. Why would  _you_  have set a building full of people  _and_  full of your father in fire? It didn't make any sense.

\- Does it make any now?

\- No. But everything's against you Cassandre."

He never used my name. How did he called me, then? He didn't. He didn't need to. When he used it, he always had something to blame me for. Or something important to tell me. Here, both. I stood up and walked closer. He didn't move, didn't step back, but his attitude didn't get any warmer. Quite the contrary, actually. It felt like the temperature just dropped. His green eyes were frozen – icy.

I'm not stupid. Despite everything he could say, I knew it had made sense of the fire. He just didn't want to say it. And it wasn't a trap, or not just that: he was  _scared_  to be right. Scared to see his theories being right. Scared to see that I was the monster he imagines those last couples of hours, when he read and reread every reports and connected every dark spots to me.

"By all mean, go ahead," I provoked him, hoping he would give up. "Tell me what you have.

\- I thought maybe someone had thrown a match or a lighter. But the elevator shaft was too deep for it to reach the ground still alighted." He talked coldly, calmly, just like he did every time we spoke of a case.  _Mine._  "I then thought someone would have set the rope you used on fire. But if it'd been the case, it would have broken and the fire wouldn't have spread to the rest of the building. Then I thought someone was with you, but only one body was found and it was your father's. He had a knife stuck in his stomach.

\- A new charge, then. Arson and parricide?

\- This is not a game."

I got quiet. Just like my father, Jacques never screamed. He didn't get angry. He made himself very clear and it was enough to quiet the most arrogant enemy.  _Me included._ I kept quiet and watched him paced back and forth around me with the horrible feeling to be a lion's prey. He didn't look at me – he stared at the ground or the walls around us. But not me.

My heart beat slowly in my chest. Very slowly, too slowly given the circumstances. I was so terribly calm. I knew what was going to happen, I already lived through it – what could I do about it? I closed my eyes for a while and took a deep breath. When I opened them again, Jacques had stopped and he was staring at me. At last. And his gaze was both icy, pleading, furious, terrified and terrifying. As if he'd seen something and didn't want to believe it, but it was so obvious that he knew it was madness or stupidity to doubt it.

"Defend yourself," he suddenly ordered me. "Say something, defend yourself!

\- What do you want me to say? You already judged me.

\- Tell me I'm wrong, give me another side of this story!

\- Why?" I was signing the death warrant of what we had,  _his_  death warrant at this moment. "You always told me not to lie."

Silence lingered and echoed more violently than his screams. The way he looked at me broke my heart, or what remains of it. He wasn't angry anymore. Wasn't icy either. Wasn't terrifying. Just sad. Disappointed. Incredulous. I gritted my teeth not to cry. I wonder what would've happened if I'd thrown myself at his feet and beg for forgiveness. Would have he forgiven me? Would have I being able to convince him that despite everything he thought, I was still innocent? Honestly, I have no idea. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he would still be dead – what's the use then? At least I didn't lie to me. Not on this, anyway.

"You killed your father," he slowly uttered, as if he still hoped I would contradict him. "You set an inhabited building on fire.

\- I put an end to his suffering. He was dying.

\- Why?" He was going to explode. I could feel it.  _And I was terrified._ "How could you…

\- He wasn't my father anymore. That's what he told me. He didn't want me as a daughter," I cut him. If he had to explode, I had to do it before him. But my voice refused to follow. It was weak. "He didn't want a daughter ready to do anything to find him, including covering her hands with blood and ashes. He didn't want a daughter ready to join the Arsonists. He didn't want a daughter like her mother."

I had let out the last part with looking at him, distantly. He blinked. I walked to the window and looked outside. It was raining. How adequate. I smiled before I turned to Jacques. As tall and strong as he was, he suddenly looked small, so small, ludicrous with his shocked wide eyes and his hangdog look. And I, small, so small, ludicrous with my oversize clothes and oversize dark circles, I felt tall and strong, as if spreading my conscience's demise in front of him gave me power. My innocence's demise, too. And my nobility's.  _Shit, that's a lot of demises, you bet he didn't know what to say._

"You didn't do it," he decreed. But he was lying. Jacques was a terrible liar,  _I know I already said it._ "Not you.

\- Why not me? I know what you saw in me, Jacques. You deluded yourself. I was never a Volunteer. My heart was never noble.

\- You didn't kill your father and all those innocents people, it doesn't…

\- Make sense?" I sighed. "I'm sure it does.

\- No. The girl I saved wasn't a murderer."

_There we are._ I said and repeated it, Cassandre Dupin was some sort of an barely corporeal entity used as a reason for everyone to tell me I became a monster. Because you don't picture a girl of twenty as a murderer. You picture her as a naïve, innocent, smiley kid, perhaps a bit arrogant for good measure.

But even then I wasn't precisely innocent, smiley naïve and a bit arrogant. I was already selfish, I already lied, manipulated and caused more death than most innocent, smiley, naïve and a bit arrogant kid of twenty. Even before Jacques found me. But can I really blame him for believing in this fantasy? It's way easier to love a noble person than to love a pyromaniac murderer. You can testify, Lemony.

I put on airs and graces, I'm theorizing, but all I felt back then was distress. When my father more or less told me the same thing, I clung onto Jacques. I told myself at least he was there. Now  _he_  blamed me for betraying  _who I should have been_ , what, whom could I cling onto? No one, because I had no one else than this stupid noble heart and his disgusted look.

"I should have never let you go with Olaf," he spat out. "I should have never taken you for what you've never been.

\- I didn't…

\- No, it's my fault. I let you go, I believed your lies, I thought you were able to resist his manipulations. And now…" He shook his head. I wanted to throw myself on his mercy. I wanted to cry. I didn't. "Now you're one of them.

\- You can't say that, Jacques.

\- I can. And I will. You're a murderer, Cassandre. You killed your father and all these people because you were  _angry_. How is it different from Olaf?"

It wasn't. Still isn't. Frankly, even now, after everything I did after the fire, I don't think I did anything worse than that. I killed many people because I couldn't stand the hollow eyes of my father, and I couldn't stand the sight of his body next to me. But I  _didn't_  have the choice. I wasn't  _given_  any choice.

I've been driven in this nightmare without any chance of leaving, or choosing. My father chained me to the sugar bowl. Jacques chained me to my father's pursuit. Olaf chained me to the idea that everything was possible and if everything  _could be_  done, then everything  _had_  to be done. Later on, Lemony would chain me to the idea there is still something to save from VFD. Even later, he would chain me to the idea there is still something to save  _in me_. It's hypocritical, I know. And partially wrong. I could have resisted.  _But I was a child_. I was given responsibilities, I was told I could save my father, that I had to save him, that I had to protect the sugar bowl, the Baudelaire and I was given every weapons to do it. How was I supposed to use them without hurting myself, or hurting others?

"You're right," I whispered. "You're right.

\- Of course I'm…

\- It's your fault." My voice had turned colder, crueller than I thought possible. But I couldn't be the only one wounded. If I had to bleed, he would bleed too. "You led me into your world. You wanted to make a Volunteer out of me. You threw me into these schemes, you used me to find the sugar bowl. Don't deny it. It's what you wanted from the beginning. Then you let me destroy myself. You found me pretty, you found me sweet, so you kept me. But you couldn't accept to see what  _you created._ You destroyed me.

\- I never…

\- You did, Jacques. You promised me the earth whilst I lost myself. You didn't stop me from becoming…  _This._ I am a murderer, indeed. Because you didn't have  _the balls_  to be one."

He didn't hit me. I would have done it. But he didn't. Instead, he stared at him for a while with his sad look. He took his bag, always ready. He took my coat – his coat, in fact, and put it on. He buttoned his coat and put the bag's strap on his shoulder. He walked to the door. I followed. He stopped in front of the door and stared at the grocery bag I left there. He smiled.  _This smile…_ It's a struggle for me to write these words and not burst into tears. Lemony doesn't know about this. Never had the strength to tell him  _why_  his brother left alone, without me, to the Village of Fowl Devotees and  _why_  exactly I arrived there too late to do anything and  _why_  he forbids me the only thing I could've done for him. But now you know. Now, you know.

"I thought I saw something in you." He stared at the door. "I thought I perceived something. But it was already dead when I saw it. I loved you, Cassandre. I loved this something, but it never existed.

\- I hate you," I spat out. The worst lie of my life. "You told me you'd protect me. I trusted you.

\- I trusted you too. I believed in you. I was wrong."

I closed my eyes. Didn't want to see him go. When the door closed, I fell on my knees in the living room. My kneecaps hit the floor with a dull noise and screamed in pain. I didn't scream. I stayed there, eyes closed, tears running on my cheeks and soaking my oversize shirt. And suddenly I felt small, so small, so tiny, lost in the middle of the living room like an abandoned doll.

What did I do then? I took my bag, my notebook, my father's and all the papers I and Jacques had gathered and I left too. What else could I do? God, I should have followed him. I could have followed him. But I went in the opposite direction, and wasted the time I had left. The time  _he_ had left.  _The time we had left._


	11. Lie 10 : I didn't love him

**Lie 10 : I didn't love him**

I said I would only tell the past, my past, and everything that happened. I said it, but it is  _my_  tale so I do what I want. I will digress on my present, which is the past of any reader, but which is currently… Anyway. My present.

I am currently hidden in an entresol above the ball room of what replaced Hotel Denouement as VFD's meeting place. Well, of course I'm not exactly welcome there and since it's at Hotel Denouement that we all took off our masks, no one really ignores who is on which side of the Schism. It's a bit more complicated regarding yours truly, since I don't even know where I exactly stand.  _Anyway._ And I'm in an entresol, doubled over, and I'm listening to what's happening under my feet.

The sugar bowl case is over since quite a few months, and even if its fate is well-known – I mean, I wasn't really discrete, it's still in every discussions. Some think I still have its content. Some think it wasn't the true sugar bowl. Some even think it wasn't me, this day, in the middle of the High Court's flames. As it happens, there are all Volunteers but I'm quite certain the other side thinks the same things. Maybe in less neutral terms, though.

Why am I'm telling you that? To illustrate everything I said and repeated those last fifty pages. No matter how precise and neutral I am, no matter how much I insist on certain points, my trial is already done and I'm already judged. And condemned. Then  _why_  do I bother myself writing these lines? Ask the last living Snicket. It's  _his_  fault. As well as the first dead Snicket. Of course, in the latter, rather the first, well, you understood me, he was the first to judge me – quite justly, actually. But during all the time we've spent together, he reflected the person I could be, could have been. And Lemony, yes, still speaking of you, still believes in this person  _even if_  he knows what happened. That's the issue, with noble hearts; they don't know how to give up on a lost cause. It's a bit late to justify again these pages, but there we are, you know I'm doing it for him, for  _them_. As much to prove them that I am a lost cause as to try one last time, the very last time, to show the world that if not completely innocent, I am not and will never be completely guilty.

Let's get back to business, shall we? Those flights of lyricism match the events I'm going to tell you about. Let me set the scene, if you please. The Village of Fowl Devotees was a charming town full a charming people and charming… No. The Village of Fowl Devotees was the most uninteresting, hideous and dreadful place I ever visited.  _Got you interested, hm?_

I wasn't following Jacques, contrary to what has been said. I was following the Baudelaire because I had started investigating on the reason why Jacques suddenly decided to follow them.  _Lemony, say hi to the readers._ There's not point in keeping the suspense going: he wasn't really trying to save the poor children, even if it would have been a great added bonus. He wanted to find his brother and he was following them. So I followed the Baudelaire to keep my mind busy, hoping I would cross Jacques' path, and without knowing I was also following Lemony. What an imbroglio, right?  _How_  could all this end badly?

Anyway, the issue was that though I had managed to gather a few notes written by Jacques and guess their general meaning, they stopped with they last guardians, the Squalor. Let's just say I wasn't any further ahead than any others regarding where the Baudelaire were. It took me every contacts I had and a few Volunteer Factual Dispatches to realize they were, as luck would have it, in VFD.

Except that Jacques knew that since way before me and he was on his way since then… So that as soon as I reached this  _lovely town_ , I found out that the merry mess you all know about had already begun and I had missed half of it. Quick summary: the Baudelaire spent their days helping the town's elderlies, lived with their handyman (who happens to be a Volunteer). Jacques and his goodwill appeared in this _marvellous village_  and, since every times you give a police sketch to idiots, they always end up doing, well, idiocies, they recognized him as Olaf. Because of course, an unibrow, a eye on the ankle, who else could it be?

When I arrived, the town was restless. They were preparing Olaf's pyre, so excited that no one saw me. At least at the beginning. Back then, I could still go unnoticed. I arrived in the dead of the night and understood quickly that the execution was to take place the day after. The Baudelaire orphans had been sent to bed so I couldn't see them before… Before…

No, slower. When I understood they were going to execute Olaf, I thought it was  _really_  Olaf. Why would have I believed otherwise? I discretely went to the prison, picked a few locks and stunned the warden. Why? Don't be so curious. In fact, I don't really know. I don't know what I was going to say to Olaf, if it was really him. Maybe I would have regretted his death, at least a bit. Well, one thing was certain: I wasn't expecting Jacques to be in the cell. Absolutely not expecting that. And the way he looked at me told me he wasn't expecting me either.  _Not at all._

" _Jacques?_ " I whispered. Just in case. My voice wasn't as confident as I wanted to – it was Jacques. And I was still myself, until proven otherwise. "What are…

\- What are you doing here?

\- I was searching for the Baudelaire, I realized they were here. But it's not important, why are you in prison?

\- Ask them."

He gestured the door with a bitter look. His eyes were reddened – he cried. Another thing I never got to witness. Something to add to the long list of things I never had the time to do with him.  _Cry._ What a joke. Anyway. I came closer to the bars.

Even with all the terrible things we said, all the terrible things I could have said, everything he said, I was magnetized. I wanted to slip between the bars and get him out of there, start again with a clean state. And I would have done it. I would still do it, even if I know he wouldn't want it more than at this point. He looked at me but didn't move from his bench. His jacket was ripped at his shoulder, his shirt was wrinkled – he'd travelled without stopping since he left. I gulped and released the bars.

"Who'd have thought you'd need me, finally?" I let out as I took my picking tools from my bag. "Don't thank me, not like I…"

I don't know how he managed to be this fast. He took my pliers, my tools, fast enough for me not to realize and grab them back. Knelt in front of the lock, I stared at him. And at my tools in his hand. I blinked. I stood up and got closer again. His eyes followed me. I shook my head and frowned. When I tried to take my tools, he stepped back. I didn't even touch them.

"What are you doing? They're preparing your pyre, you can't stay there!

\- They can't do it without a trial.

\- Without a…" I sighed and ran a tired hand across my face. "Jacques, this is not a court room, this a bunch of senile villagers! They are sure  _you are_  Olaf, they won't let you go! Give me my tools.

\- No. Maybe it's like you to run away, but it's not like me."

I insulted him, I believe. Something like,  _bloody arsehole_  or else. I'm not certain, my memory fails me on the details of what happened this evening. And the first hours of the following day. I turned away for a few seconds before I came back to him. He still had my tools in hand. He could have picked the lock himself, but of course he didn't. I gritted my teeth and shook my head again. He didn't react. Not visibly enough anyway.

"It's about  _your life_ , Jacques. Can't you just cast your pride and morals aside, once in your life?

\- Once, to get out of here," he slowly listed. "Twice to run from the cops. Thrice to survive an ambush. And then again, and again, every times it will be necessary. That's how you ended up setting…

\- Oh for God's sake, Jacques!"

I screamed. He jumped. He wasn't expecting that – me neither, to be honest. The first time he caught me by surprise. He destroyed me, didn't give me enough time to get back on my feet. This time I was standing, ramrod straight in front of him, and I could reply. And if I were to lose him, I couldn't lose him without a word, without a fight.

Because there is a world of difference between the thought of losing him but knowing he was alive, and the thought of losing  _for good._ Between the thought of never being able to make amends and the thought of never seeing him again. And I was ready to accept the former and let him go far from me, far as possible. But I wasn't ready to accept the latter. And I still can't accept it, and it's been months.

"You hate me, I betrayed you, I'm a bloodthirsty monster, a disappointment, an unspeakable monster, I get it. You don't want to see me, you don't want to owe hima anything,  _you hate me,_ I GET IT!" I hit the bars with my clenched fist. "But you can't let them kill you. I can't let them kill you.

\- It's not up to you to decide what I have to do.

\- You've been rather clear when you screamed that I hadn't done what I ought to do. It doesn't work both way? I won't repeat myself Jacques, give me my tools.

\- No. You shouldn't have come here."

He threw my tools in the cell next to his. Closed, of course. But still within his reach. I shivered and felt my legs going weak. To keep composure, I clung onto the bars. I closed my eyes. My mind, my head were completely empty. I didn't feel anything but a terrible waste. I felt tears reaching my eyes. My whole body going weak.

You know what I wanted at this point? One thing. I wanted him out of his cell. I wanted to hold him against me one last time. To apologize. And let him go. Even if it meant I would never see him again, I would have given everything  _for him to get out this fucking cell._ I kept quiet. When I opened my eyes, I stepped back from the bars and looked at him. I tried to imprint his figure, the angles of his face, the colour of his eyes in my memories. And I nodded slowly. Too slowly.

"You're letting Olaf getting away with this?

\- Olaf always gets away with everything. It is the nature of criminals, to always get away with everything.

\- And the nature of noble hearts to die for great moral ambitions?

\- You would know," he let out coldly. "If you were one."

I dodged the insult as I would have dodged a bullet. I bled. I bled a lot and I think the wound is still open and still pours flood of blood all around me. I smiled, weakly at first, then more confidently. I weakened his confidence. He probably thought I had gone crazy but I had reached such a level that it didn't mean anything, did it?

I swallowed my pride. I knew, at this point, that it was the very last time I saw Jacques Snicket alive. The very last time I talked to him. The very last time I faced him. The very last time. I smiled and I let my tears run down my face. They rushed down me cheeks, calmly, while I spoke without stopping. And I tried for the very last time. Because that was all I could do.

"I love you, Jacques. I lost myself, I'm lost, but I can still find my way back. If you show me, if you help me, I can try… No,  _I can_  turn back into the woman you loved. I promise, I can do it, I just need your help, I just need you to get out of here. And… And if you don't want me, I will leave, you won't ever see me again, won't ever heard about me again, I won't exist anymore. I'll change my name, I'll move to another country, I'll disappear, but please,  _please, I beg you…_

\- Goodbye, Cassandre.

\- Jacques…"

He turned away. I lowered my eyes. I nodded. Accepted. Took my bag, put in on my shoulder and walked. Slowly, I got further and further away from Jacques Snicket's cell. I went back to the village were everything was peaceful again.  _The world is quiet here._ VFD had a way with words, here or other. I walked for a few minutes and I sat on the steps of a house. I stared at the void, the night before me. I tried to make sense of what just happened.

And the night was so black, so thick, I didn't see anything. And it's not a figure of speech, I  _really_  didn't see anything. I didn't see Olaf entering the prison and walk past the warden I had knocked out. But I heard. The gun's detonation. I jumped and stood up. Without realizing, in a few steps, I was back in the prison at the top of the stairs that went to the cells. And I was staring at a man, on his feet in front of the cell. I was staring at the real Olaf in front of the false Olaf's body. I was staring at Olaf in front of Jacques' body. I didn't collapse. I didn't even look at Jacques, I didn't glance at his body lying on the cold ground of his cell. I just stared at Olaf.

When he realized I was there, he aimed his weapon at me. I didn't move. I probably would have thanked him if he'd fired. But he didn't. He just got closer, cautious. And he kept staring. I had his knife in my pocket. I had matched. But I didn't do anything. I didn't throw a lighter. I didn't attack him. I was tired. I was worn out – I was empty.

"What are you doing here?

\- I came to free him," I uttered. I didn't even lie. "To get him out of here.

\- Ha! Too late, lass.

\- I was there before you. He refused.

\- He…"

He frowned. I shrugged. What else could I do? I had lost. I'd lost everything. The body lying next to me was everything I had left and everything I could hope for – death. At least that's what I thought back then. I seemed thoughtful, and it was and still is rare enough to be mentioned. And he understood. He laughed the usual manner – cruelly, sickly. It could have got me goose bumps if I had been able to feel anything.

"So it was him, your Volunteer." His smile widened. "Well sorry, sweetheart, but I iced him.

\- He was going to die anyway.

\- I wanted to make sure. If you want something done, do it yourself as they say," he sighed. He put a hand on my shoulder, either to hold me back or mock me. "Now, dear Cassandre, you have two possibilities. You help me retrieve the Baudelaire or…

\- Or?"

I tilted my head. I was tired, not stupid. And despite all the questions one can ask about my logic and my morals, I wasn't going to help the man who just killed the love of my life, even if this love… Turned out to be one-sided. I frowned and took off his hand. It nonchalantly fell along his body. What was way less nonchalant was the hand that held the weapon whose barrel was against my chest, exactly where my heart was.  _Shoot,_ I thought.  _Shoot, you'll make my life easier._ If I'm here telling you my pitifully life, you know he didn't do it.

"Or what, Olaf?" I continued. "You'll accuse me of the murder. One more, one less, why would it matter?

\- You're not made of this stuff. You wouldn't survive five minutes.

\- Is that a dare? It just happens that I lost all reasons to live. I'm ready to bet me life." I took his hand and the weapons he held, and put it on my forehead. "So go ahead. Shoot. I don't give a shit. Accuse me.

\- And if I don't? If I have you live with the thought that I killed him?

\- Then I'll kill you."

He smiled. So did I. And he lowered his weapon, packed it. I wasn't relieved. I didn't feel anything, no change. I looked behind and shrugged. He left, and closed the door behind him. Locked it. He had the key – of course he had the key. He had allies everywhere. The challenge was all the more interesting.

I walked with him for a few seconds before stopping. A notebook poked out of his back pocket. It was Jacques'. I took a deep breath. It was next to his weapon. I just had to be fast – I could be.

So I was extremely fast. I rushed to the weapon and the notebook and aimed the firearm at him. He didn't move, as if he was expecting it. He kept his hands deep in his pockets.  _I couldn't let him take the notebook._ There were every information Jacques had gathered about the sugar bowl in there. Every press cuttings, every files regarding my father, everything I had given him, pages from the Snicket file – even if I didn't know they were important. All I knew was that this notebook was a weapon, whatever hands held it. And mine were better than his.

"So you really loved this damned idiot.

\- No I didn't. But this," I said, gesturing the notebook. "This is a weapon. And I won't let you have it.

\- I'll take it from your body.

\- Not sure you'll live long enough."

He smiled again. And turned back, walked to the fountain and didn't look back. Once I could be sure he would be able to see me, I ran. Yes, I ran. Like a lunatic, just like a few months before when I still followed my father's orders. I ran and I never stopped. I didn't breath correctly. I swallow mist, sang, earth, years and cold air. I ran. I didn't stop.

I didn't stop until I reached a lost motel. And when I stopped, I fell. No one was there to get me on my feet, of course. I was alone. So I stared at the sky overhead, the clouds in it. I tried to catch my breath. I was short of breath. Short of life. I could have died, this morning – yes, it was already the morning. I could have shot myself. I could have given everything up. I didn't. Some say I should have had the bravery of dying. Some say it's too noble from me. I'll just say I didn't think about it.

And there we are. The end of the first part of my life – the last, in a sense. From this day forward, I didn't live, I survived. I still survive. Jacques is dead and he took me with him, but he didn't see fit to tell me. I lost so much, this evening. Not only him, I lost my anonymity. The day after, newspapers would stick up my face on every shops and blame me, alongside with the Baudelaire, for Jacques Snicket's death. But contrary to what Olaf thought, I was made of this stuff. I could survive. After all, I never stopped running since my father told me to.


	12. Lie 11 : I won't set the hospital on fire

**Lie 11 : I won't set the hospital on fire**

"Fist rule of the investigator: make yourself scarce."

I jumped, caught red-handed shadowing. The Baudelaire had gone through this lost convenience store rejoicing in the name of  _Last Chance General Store._ Inviting isn't it? It was halfway between the motel I had found shelter in and the Village of Fowl Devotees. Why was I there? For the Baudelaire. Remember, I came there to find them, not Jacques. And my escape… Didn't really fix things, let's say. They were accused of murder. Their names were added to mine on the posters even though they thought I was dead for months – the irony always gets me.

When I learnt they were wanted, I remembered my double-promise. I told them I would find them  _and everything would be fine._ I already failed the latter. I could find them and get them out this mess – and I needed to keep myself busy. Jacques' notebook was more than full of information about them and the few Volunteer Factual Dispatches I managed to get my hand on mentioned they were there. Someone sabotaged the system, for that matter. I was sure of it and ended up being right.

But spending my time matching my information with Jacques' made me forget the ABC and, I let someone get too close. Looking back, and with the perspective I have now, I know I should have been way more careful. After all, I wasn't siding with the noble hearts anymore and everyone just happened to know it – but I wasn't with the Arsonists either and Olaf knew it. We didn't promise to kill each other for fun.

You know, a friend summarized my situation. The circumstances in which he did can give rise to smiles: he was lying half naked on a mattress with broken springs, a dying cigarette between his lips, staring at me. I was trying to find some sleep when he said I only put out the fires I don't start. I'll give you time to meditate the sentence. We're not there yet, though. I just met this friend and lighted my first fires.  _Both literally and metaphorically._

"It's a Very Flawed Début," he let out sighing. "Don't you think?

\- A début in what?" I faked ignorance. I didn't know yet on which side he was. "I'm waiting for someone. Something.

\- The Volunteer Fighting Disease, perhaps?

\- Rather the Violent Fire Due to those Volunteers."

He nodded and offered me his hand to stand up. A gloved hand. I took it and stared at him. Well, stared. I tried to. His face was partly hidden by his hat's shade, but he was tall. Imposing. Not exactly the kind of Volunteer I was used to, though all things considered, it depended on the side of the Schism. I couldn't see his eyes, as I said, but I knew he was staring at me. He knew who I was. Good for him, because I knew who he was too.

"Are you who I am think you are?

\- Of course," I smiled. "And you, mister Snicket? Are you who I think you are?"

He seemed to smile. And nod. How did I know? Not complicated. As I said, the only four people who were following the Baudelaire were Olaf, Lemony and Jacques Snicket and I. Jacques was dead, leaving only Olaf, Lemony and I. And what I read and heard about him matched with this figure wrapped in an old trench and in a heavy scent of coffee and cigarette.

He looked around and took off his hat. My heart stopped. In every ways, he looked like his late brother. The same clever eyes, though less sad, the same thin face, though a bit less, the same look, though a bit less confident. The only thing they didn't share was the unibrow. Lemony was slightly thicker than Jacques too. The way he nodded again, I knew he knew. And closed my eyes for a second.

"My condolences," I sighed. "For him.

\- You deserve them more than I do. Thank you anyway.

\- He was a noble heart.

\- Not you."

I smiled. Indeed, I wasn't. But it wasn't an accusation. Wasn't a reproach, at least not a reproach like Jacques'. It was a simple observation, a fair conclusion. A thought, randomly shared. Way later, though not later than yesterday, Lemony and I would talk about this day when he was about to abduct me and I was about to get rid of him around a cup of bitter tea. You may smile, but at this point, believe me, I was on my guard. I learnt later that Jacques was following the Baudelaire's track because his brother was too. But in the end, no one knew  _why_  he was following them. Nor for whom. Nor for which side of the Schism.

"Are you following those poor orphans," I bluntly asked. "For our dear Volunteers?

\- Are you following them for our dear Arsonists?

\- I'm not an Arsonist.

\- No, but you still start more fires than you put out."

He said, despite not having put out any fires in years. Ha, the Snicket, the Baudelaire, the Quagmire can pretend to have noble hearts.  _I know_  they're darker than that. How appearances can be deceptive. How VFD hides as much filth as treasures. Olaf is an example; I could be a second one.

What an incredible first meeting, right? I still counted Lemony as a threat and he still counted me as a murderer – though not his brother's, he already knew, don't know how, that I didn't kill him. I put my bag on my shoulder, and it felt like it'd got heavier. A feeling I had every times I faced someone who was looking for its content. And Lemony, even if it wasn't his primary objective, was looking for it.

Back then, I didn't know he was going to become one of my most important ally, but I already knew I would be better off having him on my side. So I played poker. I took his brother's notebook out of my bag and handed it to him, hoping he wouldn't take it. I still had not copied out what was written inside and I needed it. I knew there were information about my mother, my father and who they really were and I  _needed_  to know. He looked at it before going back to me.

"Here, take it. I don't think he would want me to have it after…" I shook my head. "Anyway.

\- Keep it. Its content does not interest me.

\- But the Baudelaire…

\- I have enough on them," he cut me. "Plus, my brother and I were no longer in touch.

\- He never spoke about you."

I don't know why I said that. I put the notebook back in my stuff and I didn't notice his reaction. At first, at least. When I raised my eyes, I realized he was staring into space. I unintentionally put my fingers on one of the few places that hurt. Don't worry, Lemony, I won't list them. I'll only say that your brother and Beatrice are two examples, though I had no idea at this point. It wouldn't take long for me to know anyway.

He ended up shrugging and the sketch of a smile appeared on his lips. He grabbed a pack of cigarettes and handed it to me. He lightened one absentmindedly. I didn't smoke. Still don't, except with him, but I accepted. And I managed not to cough. We stayed like this, weighing the pros and cons of killing each other. And we eventually decided to drop the idea.

I can't help comparing the two brothers. Lemony was, still is, a negative image of Jacques. When Jacques was optimistic, Lemony was pessimistic. Where Lemony was pragmatic, realist, Jacques, well… Wasn't. It's probably the reason why the former never blamed me the way the latter did.

I know what you're thinking. I'm shameless, undignified, I slept - sleep with Lemony and I still constantly say that I never loved anyone but Jacques. Just take another point of view, if you please. Lemony slept - sleep with me and still constantly says he never loved anyone but Beatrice. We both are pieces of a jigsaw that misses a piece, and it so happens that his and mine sometimes complete each other. Not always, but often. And when they do, we both forget for an instant that we lost everything. It's sappy, but it's the truth: we're both broken and we always end up fixing each other. And the cracks reappear. Invariably. But anyway, we're not there yet and I'm almost uncomfortable writing this while he's next door.

"The best cover an investigator can find is a taxi," he suddenly said. "No one suspects a taxi. It can come and go, as long as someone is inboard.

\- Does your taxi has someone inboard?

\- No." He crushed his cigarette under his sole. "Not yet.

\- Is that a proposal?

\- I don't know. Is it?"

He offered me a sideways glance. A sideways smile. And I offered him back a sideways glance, a sideways smile. I didn't know whether he was a friend or a foe. But he didn't know whether I was a friend of a foe either – we were playing liar's poker with cards we didn't have. And I was still hoping for a razor to come by and slice my wrist, so I nodded. So did he, and he walked to the car, parked in the middle of nowhere. How did I manage not to hear it?

I followed. It appears that following Snicket is my fate. I crushed my cigarette too. He stopped for a while, waited for a couple of seconds before he opened the door. He turned to me and looked at me top-down, down-top, from my hair to my toes and from my toes to my hair.

"I'll only ask you once. Have you killed my brother?

\- No.

\- I see." He nodded, again, and gestured the back seats. "We're going to Heimlich Hospital. This is where the Baudelaire are."

And it was true, Lemony; you never asked me again. After everything I did and everything I said, everything I didn't do and everything I didn't say, you never asked me again if I had killed Jacques. I never knew why, if you trusted me – I doubt it, or if you didn't want to bring the subject back between us. I don't think you'll ever tell me. I just want you to know that I thank you for this. Whatever you think about it. Whatever you believe.

I sat, put my bag next to me and watched the convenience store getting smaller and smaller. Looking back, I realized how protected, how smothered I was, to the point that I knew nothing of the world. I didn't know such places existed so close to home. But I didn't know that my own father was part of a secret organization and that he, at some point, thought it was a good idea to kill my mother, so you know…  _Kit Snicket,_ Olaf told me. I still thought she was the only one involved in this. Not for long.

"I was taught the truth about my mother's death," I uttered. Lemony was driving in silence. "Some dark story about…

\- Poisoned darts. Futile to try to ensnare me, I know what happened.

\- You know?

\- I was in the theatre this evening. With my sister and Beatrice Baudelaire." He shrugged. "Who told you?"

I kept quiet. I wasn't sure it was a good idea to tell him I knew thanks to dear old Olaf. But the brutal honesty we both demonstrated since he'd found me urged me to continue down this path. Don't fool yourself, though – it didn't last. Neither on his side or mine. I took out my notebook and wrote his name next to Beatrice and Kit's before I actually replied.

"Olaf.

\- Why of course," he huffed, glancing at me in the inside mirror. "He's well placed to talk about it.

\- He said your sister brought the darts and Beatrice…

\- Shot them. Indeed.

\- And what were  _you_  doing, then?

\- I prevented Olaf from interfering. Inter alia."

He didn't seem moved. In fact, he looked like he didn't  _care at all._ It was the past and, if my information are true, it wasn't the first nor the last time he helped the Volunteers getting rid of busybodies. I added a few more notes before I stopped.  _Why prevent Olaf from interfering?_

He never talked about my mother. He didn't seem to know her – he wasn't the type of guys I picture rushing to help a soon-to-be murdered woman, even if the said woman was on his side. When I told you about my conversation with Olaf, I said I discovered his parents were also dead  _after_  this conversation. Well, after is now.

"Why…

\- Because the Volunteers offered a group rate this evening. Your mother and Olaf's parents.

\- You mean that Beatrice Baudelaire…

\- Yes," he barged in. Sharply. A bit too much for my taste. "You just realized the Volunteers were not all white?

\- I never doubted it. It's even more funnier to see they blame me for Jacques' murder."

I turned my eyes to the window and shook my head. He didn't say anything. What could he say? Maybe they weren't better than me, but at all events, I wasn't better than them. We drove for a long time before we got to see any building.

And Heimlich Hospital wasn't just  _any building._ It was a work of art, in a way. Only a half of the building was built – and this part was beautiful. But very honestly, the whole thing would have been very common if it'd been coherent. What gave it this simultaneous decrepit and shining, splendid and hideous, refined and vulgar look was the other side of the building. The lack of, rather: it was all scaffolds covered with ripped tarps. You know what? Of all the places I've seen, I think it is the one that resembles VFD the most. Noble and ludicrously trivial, wonderful and rotten to the core, I can't see any better metaphor. Too bad that the metaphor burnt down to ashes.  _Literally._

Lemony stopped near the Hospital and stared at it. There were moves everywhere, inside, outside, everywhere but in the unfinished half. People were really talented in feigning that nothing was wrong with the building. It was an interesting picture. Fascinating. To the point where I literally spent more than five minutes staring at this unending ballet before I finally looked at Lemony. He barely looked at me and lighted another cigarette.  _And you wonder why you smell cigarette so bad._

"And so? What do we do?

\- I'm staying here," he declared, putting his lighter back in his pocket. "You do what you want.

\- Wait, what? But you're…

\- Following them. And they're inside the hospital.

\- But why would you follow them if not to go and take them?"

He didn't reply. He just smoked and looked above my shoulder or, rather,  _through_  me. Frustrated, I sighed and watched the hospital. I didn't understand Lemony and god knows it took me a long time to understand him, and I didn't understand what we were doing here. A bit of patience, and I would understand him – and I wouldn't dare tell it to him. We were always respectful of each other's personal illusions. It would have been a severe lack of courtesy to highlight how stupid we were to believe in all these things, all these stories we told ourselves every night to be able to sleep. He's always been better than me in this game anyway, no matter how many lies I told myself, I never get to sleep.

Still don't succeed today. Even if I have to admit that when I know Lemony is somewhere close, I doze off easily – yes, I finally happened to trust him. It's probably the only person I know  _and_  who's still alive who doesn't want to have me dead and buried. And even if he wanted to, I would probably oblige him so…

"Well, I see," I sighed, annoyed. "I'm going. I'm taking them.

\- And you would take them where, exactly? In their house's ruins? In yours? Maybe the 667 Dark Avenue's ashes?

\- You enjoy that, don't you?

\- Not at all.

\- I'm still going. They're not safe.

\- Not more than you are."

Haaa, those sibylline comments, as laconic as possible. I hate them,  _especially_  when they're applying to me. I gritted my teeth and didn't reply. He was right: I couldn't get in without a proper disguise. My brain was working full-speed but the only idea I got was the most questionable and least safe idea possible. I couldn't dress up as a patient or I would end up on a surgery table, and I couldn't dress up as a random nobody or I would never be able to  _reach_  a surgery table. What choices did I have left, other than dressing up as a doctor?

I had a little understanding of medicine – not much, of course, but it was part of all the things my multiple teachers tried to teach me. I thought everyone had to learn this kind of stuff. It wasn't entirely wrong, if the world meant VFD and its children.  _Thanks dad,_ I thought when I opened the door. I stopped before emerging from the car, and looked above my shoulder.

"Do you have a gown I could borrow?

\- In the boot.

\- Too kind," I said, struggling my way out the car. "I'll give it back… When I can.

\- I'll find you before you even think of me anyway. Don't get yourself killed.

\- Yes sir, I'll be careful and won't set the hospital on fire."

I rolled my eyes, took my bag and opened the boot to find an unspeakable mess of unpaired clothing. I sighed and grabbed the first gown I found, as well as a shirt. It was cleaner than the one I was wearing, even if it wasn't much. I waved at him and walked to the first café I found to change.

I couldn't get myself to throw away the jacket I was wearing – it was Jacques'. I stared at it for a while, for too long if you ask me, before I stuffed it in my bag. I'd hidden my dark circles, drew wrinkles on my eyes to age myself a bit and put talc all over my hair to age myself a lot. A last glance to the café's face and I walked into Heimlich Hospital under Lemony Snicket's eyes. My last ally, though I had no idea.


	13. Lie 12 : I forced them to help me

**Lie 12 : I forced them to help me**

The Snicket's fires file.  _The Snicket's fires file._ Alongside the sugar bowl, I think it's the worst Macguffin of the whole Macguffin's history and believe me, there are  _a lot of them_  in VFD. The whole organization elbowed their way to both of them, and I'm not even sure they knew what they meant.

Well, I may be exaggerating regarding the Snicket file. Everyone more or less knew it was aimed at the Arsonists and gathered every evidence linking them to various fires that occurred lately, lately meaning since the begging of the decade or so. You'll probably be surprised to hear that I have  _never_  been formally blamed for the 667 Dark Avenue's fire – for my father's murder, but not for the fire, so that my name wasn't in the file, kudos to the Snicket siblings.

Why am I speaking of that now? Because I was with the Baudelaire when I discovered its existence. Jacques never had the opportunity to tell me about it, neither did Lemony and I can't see anyone else telling me anything about it. But really, given the importance of the file, I wouldn't have told myself. Just for safety, even though I still protected the sugar bowl and  _no one_ knew where it was hidden.

But anyway. I found the Baudelaire in the Library of Records – I went there pretending I needed a patient file because I knew that the librarian, Hal, was a Volunteer and I wanted to destroy any proves Olaf could have had against me regarding Jacques' murders. Not very noble, right? But the fact remains that I'd recognized the Baudelaire straight away and vice-versa, a proof if you need one that absolutely  _no one_ even  _tried_  to find me.

And there I was, in the middle of the night, going through the records to find a file that would mention their name. Hal told them he'd seen their name in the infamous Snicket file, and that's what they were looking for. Me? Well, me too obviously. I was almost sure to find something to cover my back in this damned file, back then. I was going through the files between Immelman and Incisor when I heard Klaus gasping.

He was holding a photo that escaped from the now empty Snicket file. And the picture, as far as I remember, represented four people in front of the late 667 Dark Avenue. My heart tightened immediately when I recognized the first of these persons. Jacques, staring at the photographer right in the eyes, a large smile on his lips – a smile I had never seen. Nearby, a man was turning away from the lens. His face wasn't visible but I recognized him. I had met him a few days before. Lemony. I forbid myself from touching the glazed paper, fearing the Baudelaire would understand something  _they shouldn't_ , and I looked at the two others. Their parents, Beatrice and Bertrand Baudelaire, visibly frozen but happy to be there. If the picture was my main interest, the children stared at the caption written underneath. "Because of the evidence discussed on page nine, experts now suspect that there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor's whereabouts are unknown." When I read it, I raised my eyes and shook my head. I knew who this survivor was. Quigley Quagmire, even if I had no idea where he was.

"Baudelaire children," I begun. "The survivor is not…

\- Isn't it a pleasant surprise!" a voice I hated and recognized interrupted me. Esme. "You recognize me, obviously? Esme Gigi Geniveve Squalor, happy to see you again… All of you."

Instead of looking at the orphans as she was, I guess, supposed to do, she was staring at me. Until then, I only told you the horrible things I did, I only showed you my less noble side – I think it's time to announce that I still had, at this point, a few nobility left. But it was only devoted to the Baudelaire, don't imagine anything. If they'd been others orphans, I wouldn't probably had the same urge to help them.

I walked to her, all smiles, under their dumbfounded eyes and took her in my arms. She allowed it, mostly because she wasn't expecting it. She was tensed, though. When I stepped back, I tilted my head in the perfect imitation of a hypocritical friend. She was more talented than me in this domain.

"Esme, my dear, it's been too long! What are you doing here?

\- I return the question, Andrea." Oh, yeah, well, she didn't know about me and my make-up looked like Andrea's. Oops. "What are you doing with the Baudelaire?

\- Oh, those kids. They had the Library's keys and I was searching for the Snicket file. It's around since too much time for my taste, so I forced them to help me.

_\- Obviously,_ that's why Jacques Snicket died."

I rolled my eyes and stopped myself from punching her stupid face. I just smiled, unmoved. They looked a bit unsettled – and for good reason. Olaf probably told her I wasn't part of his troop anymore, some way or another. The fact that he didn't say anything about my identity surprised me though, and still does today. Maybe he wanted to play by the rules, but I have hard time believing that. Maybe he just forgot.

Anyway. I gestured the Baudelaire to start to move behind my back. Those noble idiots didn't, but they were right on this. Esme wasn't angry enough to stop caring about them. Oh, just a personal insight here. If someone tells you a woman's best weapons are her tears, it's not true. At all. A woman's best weapon is the jealousy she can instil in other women's hearts.

"How are you? Last time I saw Olaf you weren't there, so…

\- Last time you saw Olaf?" She almost jumped. See? "When was it?

\- I don't know, I don't think you were around. He probably made the most of a few hours of freedom.

\- What are you implying?

\- Me?" I cried innocently. "But nothing of course, dear Esme. I just wonder how you're doing since the last we saw each other… A while ago."

She shivered. I could see flames dancing in her eyes. If she'd had a weapon, I think I would have died but thank god, she didn't have any. But I did feel her nails in my arm's flesh, thanks to my gown for stopping her from skewering me. I smiled a bit more and she started to boil. And I gestured the Baudelaire to leave.

And they did. Slowly. They walked to the door while Esme, overwhelmed with anger and jealousy, didn't see anything but my smile and arrogance. Love? No, not love. Esme and Olaf didn't love each other – at least, Olaf didn't love her. The only person Olaf loved wasn't around and she would eventually wouldn't be at all. It was possession, some twisted sort of admiration mixed with vice, cruelty and sadism. Charming, I know.

No, love in VFD whatever the side of the Schism is the worst idea you could ever have. Love is the assurance of pain at some point. Love is always a tragedy – even if we always think that, this time, for us, it'll be fine.  _Hahahahahaha._ No. Look at my parents; it ended up in a quasi-literal blood bath. Look at Lemony and Beatrice. Jacques and I.  _Kit and Olaf,_ shit, if that's not a striking example I don't know what you need! I have others examples but it's depressing enough. I don't need to add anything.

_Anyway._  I grabbed her shoulder and remembered the knife in my pocket. Getting rid of her at this point would have made my life way easier, but I couldn't help thinking about the Baudelaire. I hoped she was alone, that no one was waiting for her outside.  _I was deluded, I know._

"Esme, Esme… Are we jealous?" My voice, originally sweet, turned cruel. Yeah, I was talented in this kind of things, since Jacques. "Are we scared that a younger and more beautiful woman would steal our Olaf?

\- I  _am_  his fiancée. Not you!

\- You have the title, I suppose. Does he even know?

\- You little…"

The slap was painful. My cheek still remembers. But I think hers still remember my knife's blade – she still had the scar the last I saw her. She jumped back and stared at me with a mix of anger, surprise and a bit of fear. And her expression turned bitter and cruel. I laughed and tightened my grip on my knife. Still Olaf's but anyway.

I was going to attack her but a huge bang echoed from the other side of the room. That's when she realized the Baudelaire were running away – and that's the moment when my plan failed. We heard screams and locker knocked down. I think we were both too surprise to react right away, we were too busy trying to understand. That's only when we heard one of Olaf's henchmen screaming that  _he had one_  that we started to run. She was running in her colleague's direction and so was I, hoping I would prevent him from taking the orphan he'd grabbed. Violet, in this case. The others managed to sneak into an airway. When I reached the man that neither looked like a man or a woman, I stopped. He held a knife under the girl's throat.

"Ha you're not so clever now," Esme groaned, walking past her colleague and running a nail on the poor girl's cheek. "Well tried, but I have  _no reason to be jealous_  of a failure like you.

\- You were rather convincing though.

\- I'm an excellent actress.

\- I won't repeat it, Esme, let her go.

\- Or what? You'll attack us with your tiny knife?"

Don't laugh, I did attack. I dashed on the man-not-so-manly-but-no-so-feminine-either he was so surprised he had a start and released Violet who tried to run away. But I didn't manage to save her – I told you, it was a lie since the beginning. I only managed to gravely, perhaps grievously, harm the henchman (or woman) while Esme took the Baudelaire orphan god knows where.

But my victim struggled and fought back. I gasped in pain when I felt his knife cutting my stomach and only had time to jump back to stop him from disembowelling me. I chose to ignore the blood slowly soaking Lemony' shirt and gown – sorry again, and its heat and I dashed on the nearest locker. Everything around it had already collapsed, so I managed to knock it down on my opponent. He couldn't move fast enough. That happens, when you were just stabbed in the chest.

I don't know if I killed him or if he died later, but all I knew was that I had an open wound that was bleeding was looked like litres and litres of blood. In my state, I couldn't help the Baudelaire. I couldn't even help myself. My hand pressed on my stomach, I managed to get out of the Library of Records, and then of the Hospital.  _I'll find you before you even think of me,_ Lemony'd said. So I staggered out of the building and walked randomly in the dark streets that surrounded the hospital.

I have a rather complex history with the Snicket family, but one thing is certain and common to all of them: they had the gift of finding me almost dead and fixing me. Kit never had time to do it, though, so let's just say the two brothers had this gift. Because at the precise moment when my head started to spin from pain and dizziness and just when I thought I would fall head first on the concrete, I felt two arms grabbing me by the shoulders, shifted me and taking me to a car. If it'd been foe's arms, I would have died given how I just gave up on struggling. But it was Lemony's arms. Obviously.

"Would you mind telling me what happened?" he said, lying me on the back seats and opening without any comment my gown and shirt. "I thought you wanted to find the Baudelaire.

\- That's what I did. I didn't think I would find Esme Squalor and… HA!"

He'd touched my wound. I whined and closed my eyes. After my shoulder, I had managed not to be wounded, at least visibly. I will never get used to this kind of stabbing pain. Lemony went through his stuff and grabbed my hand. Nothing romantic, really : he didn't have anything to anesthetize me and I wasn't supposed to scream like a gutted pig. He'd rather have me bit to death the piece of fabric he'd put in my hand. I shook my head, trying to convince him not to do that, but he didn't even look at me.

He didn't say anything. He didn't comment while he cleaned and sewed my wound. I, on the other hand, made plenty of them. I thought I'd broken my jaw and all my teeth. I screamed all the same, but the fabric prevented it from echoing outside the car. I think I also tore the one that covered the seats by dint of stabbing it with my nails. It wasn't only tears on my cheeks, it was an actual stream. Even the knife in my shoulder hurt less – I had lost consciousness, and when I woke up, my wound was already tended.

When it was finally over, he stuffed everything he used in a bag, all the pads, gauzes and bandages, and sat near my feet, still silent. I was struggling not to lose consciousness. Strangely enough, I was sure I wouldn't wake up before long if I ever let myself slip away. God, I wanted to.

"Talk to me," I ordered him. "I must stay awake. Say something, anything.

\- You're going to talk. What happened?

\- I was looking for your fucking smile in the Records with the Baudelaire and…

\- My file?" He turned his head. "The Snicket file?

_\- Yes, the Snicket file!_  They were certain they would find explanations, and I wanted to get rid of Jacques' murder's proves.

_\- Noble._

\- Shut up."

And this idiot did so. He shut up. And I felt myself slipping. If I'd had the choice, I would have  _never_  spoken to him again before long. But I didn't have the choice. I needed to stay alive until the next evening to release Violet from this nightmare. Well, for that I would need something to keep me alive but, how convenient, I had stolen some interestingly-looking drugs before I went to the Records. My pockets were full of them.

"I told you to speak.

\- But then you told me to shut up. Make your decision.

\- You…" I refrained myself from insulting him. He'd just saved my life, after all. "I tried to attack one of Olaf's henchmen. I got him, I think, but he fought back and…

_\- You got him?_

\- If you're thinking about blaming me for murdering people, know that my father and your brother already did it."

He stared at me. Even in the night, I could feel his gaze's weight on my shoulder. I sighed and took my gown. I had retrieved a syringe with a product that was supposed to keep me awake – or something like that. I grabbed it, tore the packaging and watched it. Lemony took it from me before I even had the time to take the cap off. A Snicket's thing I suppose.

"What is this?

\- If I want to wake up tomorrow morning, I need that.

\- Do you even know what it exactly is?

\- No." Lying was pointless. "Make yourself useful and inject me with this. Let's get this over with.

\- You'll collapse once this wears out.

\- And you'll be there to grab me. Inject me."

He would've refused if I hadn't been so persistent. He told me a week or so ago that he would have never injected anyone with an unknown product, even a total stranger, and that he would have largely hesitated to do it to an infamous enemy. But I wasn't offering him any choice; if he didn't do it, I would. And probably terribly.

He looked at the syringe and sighed. He took off the cap and checked there was no bubble inside. He crawled between the front seats and me to be able to reach my carotid. I granted him access to my neck, keeping an eye on him. Trust does not preclude control, and lack of trust entails control – I suppose? He took away what remained of my soaked shirt. Looking back, I realize how the situation could be confused with a sappy romantic movie, given that Lemony essentially denuded me at the back of his taxi, if you forget about the open wound, the flesh sewing and the syringe full of a powerful drug. I winced when I felt the needle in my neck.

"If you die, it won't be my fault.

\- No, it would be thanks to you," I groaned, taking a deep breath. "VFD will probably commend you for this.

\- If VFD ever thanks me for anything, then the world stopped turning.

\- It already stopped."

I don't know why I said that. I don't know why I was so brutally honest – no wonder why he didn't say anything, the poor man was uncomfortable and it was perfectly understandable. He finally sat at the front and we talked. And we talked again. About stupid things, music mainly. He told me about Duke Ellington, the jazzman, at length. _Do you have any history with this guy or do you just talk about the same man for ages for no reason,_ I asked him when he eventually stopped. He smiled absentmindedly.  _The same story you have with pianos,_ he replied. I didn't insist and we gave up on music until sunrise. I stayed lying for a while, but the drug worked. I could sit, then stand up even if my stitches hurt each and every times I dared to move a bit too abruptly. I had to find Violet, move her to safety and make sure Olaf didn't get the Snicket file.

And all that while the only thing that kept me alive worked, of course.


	14. Lie 13 : You're nothing for me. You'll never be

**Lie 13 : You're nothing for me. You'll never be**

"You do have the file, right ?

\- Of course I don't. I wouldn't be there, idiot," I groaned. "I deduce you don't have it either ?"

Olaf groaned too. I didn't have much time, my head was already spinning and I felt weak. The drug Lemony injected me with wouldn't last forever and I was already pushing it too much. Quick summary of the events: I'd helped Klaus and Sunny getting their hand on Violet, left them to go back to the Records and try to find other pages of the Snicket file or, even better, a copy of it. No but seriously, how is it possible to be so idiot to forget to make copies of such an important copy?  _Not a problem for VFD._

Anyway, I'd spent most of my day standing and I was almost sure my bandages were already blood-soaked and my stitches broken. But I didn't have the time to check - and doing in front of Olaf? It would be easier to simply ask him to kill me. And he would have obliged.

Well, that's what he wanted to do after all. That's what we promised each other after all. We were staring at each other from each side of the immense Library room, separated only by a few knocked down lockers. I tightened my grip on my knife as well as on the matches I had left from the 667 Dark Avenue. Given the amount of paper, one would be enough to set the whole hospital on fire but I wasn't sure it was a good idea to reach such desperate measures. Not yet anyway. And I had no idea whether or not the Library of Records actually contained anything important. A shame for me,  _they did._ My mother's autopsy report, for instance. As well as a police report regarding the events of  _La Forza del Destino,_ the play during which she died alongside Olaf's parents.

He walked in my direction, stepping over thrilling papers regarding the Fauna and flora of Micronesia and Fauns in greek literature. I stepped back – I was on the right side of the room, the door was right behind me.

"I'd advise you to leave very quickly, Cassandre," he smiled. "If you don't want to be buried under this building's ashes.

\- You're not going to set  _a hospital_  on fire?

\- Not the hospital. The Records that unfortunately are underneath the said hospital.

\- Those are useless papers, why…

\- Useless papers? Stupid girl." He shook his head and stretched out his arms to show everything around. "Those are the second most important Volunteer's archives. My life, yours, all our lives are here. And it so happens that I'd like some of it to disappear."

That would be dishonest to pretend I didn't want the same thing. I went to the Records to destroy every evidence that could link Jacques' murder to me, after all. However, and I can finally say I remember something from my education, I respect paper. Books, of course, but also and more generally everything made of pages covered with words. There are some books that should not exist, obviously, and some newspapers articles look more like baby's hollers than literature – but never mind. The mere idea of watching all these files, all these words, all these sentences burning didn't please me. And don't even think that just because I  _indeed_  saw these files, words and sentences burning, I accept it any better.

He continued to walk, enough to force me to have my back against the wall. I couldn't step back again, or I would simply leave the Records. Enough to reopen my wound that I could feel bleeding again. My heart was spinning and it wasn't because of him.  _Gods no._ He didn't look like he knew, maybe because it was too dark for him to see the huge dark stain on the jersey I had taken from Lemony's boot.  _Another clothe I ruined._ He laughed. Barked, rather. Like a hyena. On ecstasy.

"You're scared of me?

\- Oh please. Not of  _you_ ," I spat out with much more confidence that I felt at this point. "Rather of your pyromaniac tendencies.

\- She said." His smile widened. "That wasn't very smart of you to gut my man.

\- That wasn't very smart of you to let your self-appointed fiancée wander around the corridors of this damned hospital. And it wasn't smart of your underling to attack me.

\- Enough blabbering," he interrupted me. "Those Records will burn. With or without you, I don't care."

And the worst was that, contrary to almost every people on this planet, he  _really_ didn't care at all. He was more eager than I was to set fire to the Hospital's basement since he took a lighter out of his pocket, the kind pseudo-bikers play with. You know, the one covered with tattoos, only wearing leathered clothes. See what I mean?  _Anyway._ I wouldn't have figured it out if not for the polished metal's shine. It only lasted a second, but I saw it.

He didn't have time to light it. Well, he did, but not at this point – I just ruined the suspense, I know, but this book's objective is not to be entertaining. He didn't have time to light it because I dashed on him with all the strength I had left. It fell with us on the flour and I supposed I should thank Olaf for cushioning my fall and preventing my head from hitting the concrete. I let out a ridiculous creak and quickly moved off. A bit groggy, he didn't react at first when I crawled to grab the lighter. But when he realized I had taken it, he literally bounced back on his feet and grab my collar to pin me against the nearest locker. If you're wondering, it does hurt but not as much as the gaping wound of my stomach. I clenched my fist around the lighter and tried not to show him I was about to pass out. I don't know about the last part, but he grabbed my wrist and, almost breaking ninety-five per cent of my hand's bones, and managed to take it back.

"You really think stopping me from burning this hospital will redeem you from what you've done? You think it'll bring back your stupid father? Your stupid boyfriend?

\- Oh, no," I smiled. "No, but if I can stand in your way, that's enough for me. And I'm tired of flames, so…

\- Spare me, Cassandre." He frowned and released me. Still don't know how I didn't collapse. "You know what? I'm in a good mood. Let's bury the shovel and come with me.

\- It's not the shovel, it's... Beg pardon?

\- Don't tell me you didn't enjoy your time with me, when you pretended to be Andrea."

I didn't reply. There wasn't any answer – that was fun, sure. In a way. That was less fun to chase orphans and allow a woman to die eaten by leashes in Lake Lachrymose. But I won't pretend I didn't think about it for a while. If I'd accepted to follow him, many things would have been different. I come back again to the little choices that influenced the whole set of events that followed. And still influence what happens now.

If I'd followed Olaf at this point, I would have found myself on the wrong side of the Schism but on the right side of the line – the side that eventually won. If I'd followed him, I could have been a double agent. More likely, I would have helped him do whatever he wanted while still protecting the sugar bowl. What would have happened to it? No idea. Maybe we would have all forgotten about it.

But I knew Lemony was waiting for me outside. I won't pretend I felt indebted (even if he'd saved me the day before), but not coming back felt… Actually, it has nothing to do with Lemony, sorry. It had to do with Jacques. Very little time had passed since the Village of Fowl Devotees, but it felt like an eternity since I found him dead in his cell. And I wasn't angry anymore. If I'd been, I would have followed Olaf out of contradictory spirit. But I wasn't angry anymore.

"I'm not an arsonist," I repeated. "I'm not like you.

\- You have as much blood on your hands…

\- I didn't say I was better than you. That's just not true. But I'm not like you. I don't live having blood on my hands.

\- I assure you, sweetheart," he groaned with a way too radiant smile. "You get used to it. But I suppose you're old enough to choose for yourself."

He shrugged. There was a snap, a tiny click. The lighter caught light again. Silently, motionless and powerless, I watched it falling again.  _But lighted, this time._ There was a moment of hesitation when the flame licked the paper, but it seemed to refuse to burn. A second later, the same paper withered and gradually contaminated everything around it. I didn't see Olaf leaving. As always, I couldn't keep my eyes away from the flames.

I often consider Heimlich Hospital's fires as one of my fires. It's true I didn't cause it. But if I'd been strong enough, clever enough, I would have stopped Olaf. But despite the disgust I felt in front of these burning papers, I couldn't help being relieved. Obviously I hadn't found what I was searching for. I didn't have any information about my father or mother, I didn't know if there was anything about me in one of those lockers. But did it really matter? I would have destroyed it anyway. And I didn't even think of the Snicket file, and completely forgot Jacques had kept a few draft pages in his notebook.

Have you noticed that every times I witness a fire, whether I provoked it or not, I'm always physically hurt? I just noticed. My relationship with fire is more or the less the same I have with VFD – painful, fascinating and destructive. Adequate. Olaf got me out of my trance by announcing that there was a fire in the hospital.  _No shit?_ Instead of leaving and going back to Lemony, thing that I should have done given my state, I rushed into the alleys and grabbed as much files as I could.

Don't have any hope here, dear reader: most of what I took was useless.  _Really useless._ There were files about rare species of birds, pink ink octopi, some papers written by Montmorery Montgomery without any interest other than scientific, some grammar articles from the Answhistle couple… In fact, only three of them were useful. The first one on Mortmain Mountains. The second one on theatre. And the third on a secret code given up by VFD decades ago.

I left when the smoke started to suffocate me. My bag was full of useless stuff and it slowed me down. And didn't make my state any better. Call that idiocy or desperate try to resolve things, I don't care, the fact remains that when I finally managed to reach the entrance, panic was absolutely everywhere. I suspect Olaf didn't just throw his lighter in the Records, but also some matches around his HRD office – but I can't prove it.

When you're in the middle of a panicked crowd, there are two things you can do. Either you have good luck and you manage to use the said panic to leave the crowd without losing any limb, or luck gives you a finger and you end up trampled to death by the said crowd. I never was very lucky, but this time, luck had the courtesy to overlook me. Staggering around, my hand pressed on my stomach, I made my way through the screaming herd that tried to reach the hospital's doors. I didn't know where Lemony was, and I couldn't even think straight. I thought maybe he was waiting in the unfinished half, near the scaffolds.

I just forgot Olaf wasn't alone. When I opened the last door before the taps and beams, I felt my eyebrow and a part of my hair scorching.  _Of course_  they set fire to this part of the hospital too. I winced and stepped back from the door that already spread enough smoke to make the air bitter and the surroundings blurry. Unless it was blood loss. Never decided.

"To think Jacques described you as a clever woman," I heard nearby. I felt a arm sliding under mine to support me. "You've lost your brain in the meanwhile, or you just made him believe you had one?

\- Shut up…" I don't think he heard me. If he did, he didn't reply. "Olaf…

\- I quite understand what Olaf did. Shut up and walk."

If I'd the tiniest bit of strength left, I would have sent him packing. But I wasn't sure I would be able to stand on my own so I obeyed, compelled and forced. He took me to another door leading to a part of the unfinished half that was not yet burning and almost threw me in his taxi.  _I'm inflating,_ he didn't  _throw me._ But he released me and I collapsed, so it comes down to it. He immediately started the engine and left the fire.

I turned on my back and took off my clothes. I winced when I saw my stomach. The stitches were broken and the rims of the wounds were removed enough for me to see this kind of… You don't need the details. I gritted my teeth and turned my head to get see Lemony staring at me in the mirror.

"You hold out?

\- No," I let out. "If you're going to say that…

\- I told you so, yes, indeed. Don't touch the wound.

\- Why? You want me to bleed out?

\- No." He frowned under his age-old hat. "I don't want to bury you.

\- Then burn me. It would be adequate."

I laughed, as if it was the finest joke I ever made. I know that I struggled to stay awake the day before, but I didn't want to fight anymore. I was worn out. My head was spinning. I was cold – and hot at the same time, where my blood was streaming. The taxi's humming lulled me and…

And wouldn't it had been better to just not wake up? It wasn't my business. Lemony could have found some way to get rid of my body. On a side of the road, in a bonfire. I wouldn't have cared. I didn't even know why I still struggled. Today… It's a bit clearer. As clear as the eyes that were watching me in the mirror when I ended up closing mine and accepted to hand my fate to another Snicket.

A jump in time, if you please, to give you news about the ball I went to. It so happens that I was spied on by Lemony that I was running from to go to… The ball. It always like a snake biting its own tails, with us. He wasn't really welcome to this kind of party and no, it's not because of me, he was  _persona non grata_  way before I ever broke into the VFDian picture. But given that I'm one of his very few company, and given that I'm as much a  _persona non grata_  as he is… Anyway. Lemony is not my guardian angel because he wouldn't step in to save me from a misstep. However, he's always been quite talented in highlighting the said misstep afterward. If he follows me around, it's only because he has nothing to follow anymore. The Baudelaire orphans are nowhere to be found, the sugar bowl,  _hm_ , his sister is lost and most likely dead… And VFD does not want him back. So for lack of anything else, he follows me. And watches over me, even if I don't know if it's to stop me from causing a disaster or to save me from said disaster.

In any event, when I woke up, still at the back of his taxi, he was acting as the latter. It was pitch black and the car was stopped. I couldn't see anything so I just slid my hand under the t-shirt I was wearing. My chest was covered with bandages. Dry bandages. I sighed and try to sit. A cry of pain later, I was lying away.

"See, you're not dead," Lemony said, apparently sitting on the passenger seat. "I hope you won't make me regret my efforts.

\- I'm sure you regret them already.

\- Don't give yourself so much credit. If I hated you, it would mean I care about your existence.

\- Outch." I laughed. "You realize I could be offended?

\- That would mean you care about my existence too."

I didn't reply. I stared at the car's roof without seeing it. I wasn't really tired, or I didn't realize I was. He didn't sound any more tired than I was, but I could barely see his figure, so guessing his thoughts…

But the way he talked, more than his voice, surprised me. Most of the times, when you talk to someone you give not shit about, your voice is rather cold. Or cynical. In this case, we were just talking. No coldness. And you don't save someone you don't care about.  _Well, I wouldn't save someone I don't care about._

"You have funny way not caring about my existence," I then said. "You often save the life of…

\- It doesn't have anything to do with you.

\- Your karma won't get any better because of it. I even think the whole world would have thanked you if you'd just let me on the side of the road.

\- You really think theatralising your guilt makes it less obvious?"

I winced. Lemony has this gift. Not to make me wince, even if he manages to do it just fine, but rather to highlight everything that wants to keep in the shadows. That's what actors do. Actors and investigators. Back then, I couldn't put a name on what I was. A liar, indeed. But then? It would take me a while to understand that it took a great liar to be a good actor – not like Olaf, and a bit like Lemony. That being said, I never had the opportunity to act. Someone wanted can't act. And I was. Still am. But I spent enough time pretending to someone else not to regret it.

"It works most of the time," I admitted. I wasn't in the mood of pretending otherwise. It was pointless – he understood. "It diverts focus.

\- Not mine. I didn't think you would be the kind of woman to feel guilty.

\- I killed my father. Jacques died because he refused to let me help him. If I didn't feel anything, I would be an actual monster." I sighed and shook my head. "But who am I kidding? You're nothing for me. You'll never be.

\- You're a good liar. But not good enough yet."

I almost stood up to slap him. Two things, however. If I'd done it, I would have bled out. And I didn't know where his face was. So I didn't do anything. I closed my eyes.

It's incredible, really, how the mere fact of closing your eyes and pretend the entire world doesn't exist anymore can comfort you. Like closing your windows during a storm. I'm afraid that it only goes so far, though; at some point, closing your eyes doesn't wash away the sadness, the despair and tiredness. It doesn't change anything to the horrors around you. At this point, the horrors are not just around you; they're part of you. You  _become_  those horrors. You  _are_  a horror.


	15. Lie 14 : You're really bad at this game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N : Sorry for my late update, with Christmas and my exams I completely forgot to even long on my account. In any case, I hope your holidays are going well and I wish you a very happy new year!

**Lie 14 : You're really bad at this game**

I don't know how many days passed before I was able to sit alone. Lemony drove the whole day while I was comatose. My wound was too deep for me to switch from lying to siting, or, even worse, standing, alone. I have to admit Lemony Snicket was an exceptional carer. I didn't have to ask for his help – I wouldn't have asked anyway, better be dead than pitiful. He just opened the car's door and bended so that I could cling onto his shoulder.

Even when I managed to move without need of his help or support, I still was too weak to wander in the hinterlands, since that's roughly where we were. He told me the Baudelaire had somehow followed Olaf.  _Caligari Carnival._ That's where they went. Some sort of monster circus lost in the middle of nowhere. Lemony went there almost everyday. He watched over the Baudelaire – and Olaf, obviously.

His car ended up in what looked like a mountain refuge. Without the mountain, of course. But it had every characteristics of a mountain refuge… Without the mountain. There were cooking devices, a bathroom, beds, but we were too careful to sleep in such a poorly secured place.  _As if a car was secure, I know._

I hadn't showered for a while –  _an eternity_  to me. Even if I cleaned my wound every day and replace the bandages at the same time, I felt dirty. I  _needed_  a shower. More exactly, I  _had_  to shower. Say what you want, that I was stupid to put myself under a jet of water even though I had a barely closed up wound on my stomach, that I should have waited for my not-so-guardian-nor-so-angel to come back. I don't care – there is much worse you can say about me anyway. The fact remains that I grabbed a "clean" towel in the boot and went to the refuge. I held onto everything I would, from furniture to wall, including doors.

You don't need to know every details of my undressing, you know the basics. The small broken mirror of the bathroom, when I turned to him, reflected something I would've preferred not to see. I hadn't seen my face in a great while. I never had time to waste looking at myself with Jacques and, since Jacques… Well, let's say I hadn't come across any real bathroom.

Before it all begun, this awful series of awfulness, I remember I was a pretty girl. That's what people said, anyway. A pretty girl of eighteen, her whole life ahead of her. An angel face. Big eyes, big light purple eyes, though it was a faded purple, almost grey. Long brown hair, a bit ashy too. But a smile, a huge smile, which made up for the lack of vivid colours on this lovely face.

What I saw in front of me wasn't a lovely face. It wasn't lovely at all – there wasn't anything lovely in it. Eyes still big, but ate up by even bigger dark circles. Cheeks grown hollow with fatigue and weariness. Protruding cheekbones. Dry, hideous lips. And what used to be a harmonious body now looked too thin, almost grotesque. Not to mention the scars that covered a skin that should have been smooth. I wasn't even truly sure it was me, in this mirror.  _But after all, flesh eventually shows the wickedness inside._

For lack of understanding anything of this reflection, I turned away and entered the shower. I don't know what happened in this shower, if it was the hot water, this damned reflection or if my conscience finally slapped me in the face like a broken rubber band. All I know is that it took a few minutes for me to sit against the wall and cry. As if I'd never stop. As if it was the last thing I would ever do – cry, for everything I didn't have the time, the right of the strength to cry for.

Water still ran on my hair. It dangled on each sides of my life and almost made me believe it was only water on my face. I was cold but as often happens, it wasn't the air around me that was cold. Huddle up in a corner, I felt my wound screaming its pain – I would have screamed in pain if I hadn't been already sobbing like a lost girl. That I was. That I still am. What I'd seen, permitted, what I was suddenly appeared to me and I couldn't accept it.

I said countless of times in this tale that I didn't know how, why or when some events unfolded. Well, I don't know why Lemony came back early. And I don't know how he knew I was in the bathroom. I never asked – it didn't sound important. I didn't hear him enter, and I didn't hear him opening the shower's door either. I didn't see anything. My vision was blurry, dark. I don't even know if I felt anything but this horrible, terrible hollowness. And cold.

He sat next to me, under the running water. He had already taken away his pants and jumper. His shirt got soaked almost immediately but he didn't say anything for a long, very long moment. He didn't even look at me. He was looking at the void in front of us. Void made of a tiled wall, immensely and sadly white. And while he was quiet, so completely quiet and so completely motionless, my shoulders jolted at the pace of my sobs and I wanted to scream. My mind screamed. It revolved, for the first time since the beginning of these horrors. I was blinded by the urgency of the situation. I was running and never stopping, like my father told me to. And now I had nothing to run after, now I'd stopped, I was recovering my eyesight. And it was painful, so goddamned painful.

"You father was a rigorous man," he finally said with a distant voice. "Word which here means that he was strict about every aspects of his life. He was strict about VFD's precepts. He was strict about our methods. He was strict about the schism. He was strict enough to kill your mother, because she strictly went too far. He was strict enough, I believe, to disown you because you had strictly overstepped the strict limits of his strict morality."

My hiccoughs didn't stop. Not just yet. But my mind, still cold and terrifying, focused on Lemony's soothing voice. I slowly loosened my arms' grip around my legs. But I didn't calm down. I didn't understand where he was going – not just yet. It an actor's problem. They always use convoluted ways to reach a very simple end. And as a very complicated man, Lemony was trying to reach the very simple end of comforting me.  _God_ , how strange it sounds. How strange it looks, written on this piece of paper. How strange it is to imagine Lemony Snicket's convoluted mind fully focused on the odd task of comforting a quasi-stranger. A  _naked_  quasi-stranger under a burning shower in a mountain refuge that'd lost its mountain.

"My brother," he continued with the same voice. "Was a noble heart. And like every noble hearts, he never understood how much the darkness of this world could taint even the purest hearts. Maybe he didn't want to understand it. We separated in the same circumstances or so as you. Except I was falsely accused.

\- Why… Why are you…

\- My brother was looking for me. You knew that. He was looking for me because he wanted to understand, to try to understand. He would have done the same with you, given the time.

\- Why do you say that?"

I turned my head, this time. I looked pitiful, drenched and probably reddened by the heat and my tears, hair dripping like a mop on my hollow cheeks, my dark circles and my scars. He turned his head too and stared at me for a long, long time. I didn't understand. I didn't understand why he tried to find me excuse for having caused two noble hearts' death, one of them being his brother.  _His own brother!_ It didn't make any sense. I couldn't give it any sense.

But I wasn't sobbing anymore. My shoulders still jolted a bit, tears still ran across my face, but I wasn't in a quasi-hysterical state anymore. His plan was working, even if I didn't know it yet. My despair was turning into frustration of not knowing what he was doing.

"Are… Really trying…

\- I'm not absolving you from everything you did," he cut, frowning. "You killed a man, burnt a building and let a hospital turn to ashes. You helped a criminal getting away with every villainy he committed. And you didn't save my brother.

\- Now I feel much better," I let out with a broken voice. "You're really bad at this game.

\- But your father wasn't a perfect man. My brother wasn't either. Their death didn't make them better than they were. Your father is still a stubborn and dangerously strict man. My brother is still a stupidly naïve and noble man. You didn't change anything about that."

It didn't make any sense. I don't think it was supposed to make any, in fact. But I understood what he meant because  _he wasn't_  bad at this game. He knew what he was saying and I understood him… Well. What I have done was vile. But I never ceased, since the very beginning, to put every people I'd destroyed on a pedestal. And I got myself deeper in the deepest abyss there was, the abyss where those who slayed angels were supposed to be. But they were no angels. My father had rejected me after everything I'd done to save him. Jacques refused to listen to me.

Jacques… Not a single day goes by when I do not regret. Regret what? Everything, absolutely everything. I can't stop repeating those moments I lived with him, trying to find the exact moment where I could have chosen differently, where a step aside would have changed everything. And I know where this step was. I insisted. I stormed. I screamed. I got what I wanted: being involved in this godforsaken organization that is VFD. And I paid the higher price – he paid the higher price. And I know, I know now, that the man I'll forever love is no longer Jacques Snicket, the investigator who got me out of my house's ashes. I changed him, my mind changed him, in a far better man than me, far batter than himself. Because it was easier to see him as a good man, and I as a bad woman. If it wasn't the case, why did he reject me?

"He wouldn't have forgiven me.

\- Given the time, he would have begged for your forgiveness." He shook his head, disillusioned. Disillusioned and sad, as if childhood memories suddenly came back to his mind. "He would have blamed himself for what he did to you, so much he would have spent his life looking for you. His death does not change what he did. He refused to let you help him.

\- I have blood on my hands…

\- We all have. He had, every self-proclaimed noble hearts of VDF have because they didn't do anything. As for me…"

_As for him_ , even if he didn't have blood on his hands as literally as I did, he spelt some. Indirectly, perhaps. But still it was blood. And it didn't wash away. He didn't continue, though. His kind of silence, if you don't know yet, seldom needs to be explained.

I sighed. I was still crying, but my head felt comfortably numb. Silent. I only realized water was still running when he stopped it. And I only heard drips falling on the tiles,  _plic, ploc_ , and his breathing. I closed my eyes and leaned my head on his shoulder. He didn't move for a while, then he just put his arm around my shoulder. His drenched shirt stuck on his chest and looked plasticized. We stayed like this for very, very long minutes that ended up being tens, dozens of minutes. He didn't say anything. Neither did I. All I knew was that it felt like the curtain had fallen again and I was blinded. And it felt good.

I break this story's temporality way too much, but it's a suitable time to tell you something. I'm asking you to accept a fast-forward that brings us almost a year afterward. You'll understand why I ask you this mental effort. Almost a year, then, in a motel on the edge of the city.

I never counted the days. I never marked the anniversary – a week, a month, six months. But I don't know why, this night, I woke up and I knew. It'd been a year to the day since Jacques' death. My eyes wide opened, I stare at the void, the night all around me and I stood up. I walked to the kitchen, filled a tall glass with whisky and drank it. Silently. And I cried. I do cry a lot in this part, I know – you see the point now? I don't have to write chapters and chapters of whining. Anyway. I cried. Silently, at least that's what I think. Light woke up Lemony and drew his attention. At least that's what I believe.

What a scene he came across, when he entered the kitchen. It was in every respect worthy of the one he came across, in the bathroom. Cassandre Dupin, licensed arsonist (even more licensed than back in the bathroom) and occasional murderer (technically condemned for it), a glass that  _used to be_ full to the brim with alcohol in the hand, tears disforming my face, naked under one of his shirts (my nakedness is turning into a gimmick, isn't it?). But it didn't mean much, given how long it looked on me. He took my glass and put it on the counter. He didn't ask why. He already knew.  _Didn't he?_

He stayed there in silence, close, and watched me cry. I always managed to never have him see me cry until then. But I didn't care if he was there. I didn't care if he saw me. It physically hurt, just like it felt almost physically cold under this goddamned shower. It felt like my whole body was burning, twisting, screaming when it obviously was as healthy as can be.  _Contrary to my mind._ As if I finally got a grasp of my situation but, yet again, I couldn't really. I still can't. When my sobs calmed down, Lemony handed me a cigarette. We smoked, still silent, until my broken voice ripped the silence apart.

"Does it hurt? Do you miss her this bad?

\- Sometimes I do.

\- Why is it so painful? It's been so long, I already forget him…

\- Because you loved him. And I loved her," he smiled. One of those ghostly and rare smiles Lemony seldom granted me. "And because they're gone."

Gone. This word is enough to make me cry, even now, even as I'm writing by a candle that soon will be gone too, hidden in an old closet in an old hotel burnt a few months ago. Especially now, in fact. I nodded and finished my cigarette. So did he. I didn't wait for me to run away – I took shelter against him, in his arms. I didn't cry. I just held myself against him, and he held me against him in return.

This chapter is already sappy enough, but I will make no bones about it: I know how lucky I am to have you, Lemony. This is the point of this fast-forward. I know I would be dead without you. Somehow. And even if it's not love between us, I don't know how to say it differently. I love you. Since the very beginning – the bathroom, perhaps. Not like Jacques. Not like Beatrice. I love you like a castaway loves the fisherman who saved him from a likely drowning. I love you like someone who fears darkness loves the light. I love you like a mad woman loves he who can appease her, and that's what I am. And it hurts. But it keeps me alive. Much like this evening when you kept me alive.

"I wished I never met him. I wish I could forget him.

\- I know.

\- Do something," I begged. "Please, do something.

\- There's nothing to be done, Cassandre."

And he softly caressed my hair, softly cradled me, softy kissed me and softly took me back to bed. He put my head on his shoulder and his hand on my waist and waited for me to fall asleep. He stayed up all night, made sure I wasn't going to swallow some poison or razor. And I fell asleep in his arms at daybreak, still curled up against him.

Haaa Cassandre Dupin, this woman who keeps on saying she's still madly in love with Jacques Snicket and ends up in his brother's arms. Judge me, others did. I judge myself everyday. But here is what I digressed: the bathroom episode set off a series of events that led to this precise moment, even if it didn't lead to such intimacy since he only wrapped me in a towel and redid my bandages. Before that, Lemony was a stranger to me. A vaguely scornful stranger, the living proof I had sunken extremely low (he was a fugitive after all). Some ally, at most. He changed things in his clumsy manner, with his soaked shirt and his complicated speeches. He became some sort of a reflection of myself. Something that made up for the dead thing I found when I looked at myself. Something that closes my eyes when I can't look. I'm not saying it's brave. But it is what it is.

Anyway. When I woke up, I wasn't in his arms anymore. He was gone – he often leaves in the middle of the night. On his stead, on the pillow, I found a piece of paper and, on this piece of paper, his muddled and packed in writing.

"We are ships without tillers, sailing boats without sails caught in the storm.

We sail side-by-side, rim-by-rim, we have the same destination,

But never quite the same path."

And he was right. Like always.


	16. Lie 15 : I don't want to protect the damned sugar bowl anymore

**Lie 15 : I don't want to protect the damned sugar bowl anymore**

Mortmain Mountains are one of the only mountains near the city. There's nothing interesting about it, except two things: Olaf was there, Sunny Baudelaire in his boot and Klaus and Violet chasing him, and one of VFD's last safe place was perched on them. The Valley of Four Drafts. A lovely place, before fire ate it. But I'm digressing, let's go back to the point, namely the reason why I'm talking about those mountains.

This said, if you've followed the Baudelaire's story, you already know why I'm talking about it. Once my wounds completely healed, both physical and psychological (I never really recovered from any of them), Lemony asked me to help him with his search of the Baudelaire. It didn't take long before we understood they were climbing Mortmain Mountains looking for their sister. You remember when I said I took three useful documents in the Library of Records? Well, two of them helped me in this.

Well, one of them to begin with. When I was searching for the exact location of the HQ. If Lemony had been there, I wouldn't have needed it – I could have simply waited, to be honest, but I had no idea if he knew where it was.  _The answer's yes,_ no need to keep the suspense. The fact remains that I discovered the existence of a way to hide information under stains of coffee and I used it quite a few times afterward.

From what I'd understood, if we were to follow Olaf and the Baudelaire it was obviously to keep an eye on them. So we needed to go to the HQ, and we needed to be discreet. And not to die, even if spring was almost there.

"Cassandre? Pack your things," Lemony ordered me when he came back to the refuge. "We leave for the HQ of…

\- The Valley of Four Drafts?

How do you know?

\- You told me to trace the Baudelaire. Why did you want to go?

\- I've got something to retrieve."

Obviously.  _Something._ And I could only pray to know what. Instead of questioning him, I gathered my papers, stuffed them in my bag over my dear sugar bowl and went to the car. I waited for us to be far enough from the refuge and close enough to the mountains to finally speak, pretending to be thoughtful, my eyes pretending to admire the surroundings.

"Are we following the Baudelaire to protect them, or because they have something that belongs to you?

\- They don't have anything that belongs to me.

\- Then you follow them to protect them," I deduced. "You never said why.

\- You just said it.

\- We can make this last a while, you know.

\- That'll keep our journey busy."

Cryptic, friendly Lemony. Because in the end, I knew that he was running after the Baudelaire like a dog after a car, but I had no idea  _why_  he was doing it nor what would he do with them if he caught them. Well, if he  _ever_  caught them. His behaviour rather implied that he preferred to watch them from afar and vaguely make sure they survived. Yeah, I still ignored many things. That does not mean I know everything – I don't think I'll ever be able to know everything about this man.

In simplest words, let's say I literally knew  _nothing_  about Lemony. If Jacques ever said anything about him (I don't even remember if he did), it was in such sibylline terms that I forgot everything. My father never mentioned the Snickets. Olaf simply said he couldn't stand them.  _Well, he doesn't stand anyone anyway._

"You're not the kind of man to run after kids for no reason.

\- And what kind of man am I, according to you?" He glanced at me in the rear-view mirror. "I didn't know you were versed in psychology.

\- And two weeks or so ago, I didn't know anything about you. I hardly see someone so keen to remain in the dark following random children. So if it has nothing to do with them, it must have something to do with their parents.

\- And what would this something be?

\- If you were close to Bertrand, I can't see a reason why it remained a secret."

He raised his eyes to the mirror and I saw a corner of his lips rising. Some sort of a smile, the closest he could get to amusement. I didn't know how much I was right – how much I was  _too_ right. Even if I knew there was something in him, something in his eyes that looked like what I felt, I didn't know what this thing was. You're never blinder to other's pain than when you're in pain yourself. And even if I was getting better, I was  _still_  in pain. A bit like him, I suppose.

I was going to continue my investigation when his smile vanished and his eyes fell back on the road. He sighed. The kind that said more than my stupid thinking. I turned my eyes from the scenery and stared at the mirror too.

"Unless things changed, I'm still dead for most of the world.

\- Dead?" I blinked. I was expecting a lot of things – not that. "How…

\- The thing I want to retrieve from the Valley of Four Drafts is what you called  _my_  file. It's actually Jacques'.

\- The Snicket file? Why?

\- I'm not doing all the work for you." He lightly frowned. "Why would anyone pretend to be dead?

\- To avoid an awkward date. Or a sentence. What have you been accused of?"

He didn't reply, but opened the glove box to take a press clipping. Without looking at me, he handed it to me. It was old – the ink was fading. I unfolded it carefully even if it was already torn and folded.  _A dead murderer!_  the Daily Punctilio titled. It's evidently always been a rag.  _The arsonist and murderer Lemony Snicket was found dead this Monday in his flat…_ I didn't need to read more. The rest was a praise of a detective N.T Colafoue (seriously, Olaf?) that had conducted a quick and efficient investigation and came to the conclusion that the man died from a accident. An accident involving three bullets in the victim's back. The standard of investigation was as high as you can expect from this kind of newspapers.

I couldn't assimilate this information, no matter how many times I tried to. I didn't know Lemony – not well enough at least. But he wasn't a murderer, let alone an arsonist.  _We recognize each other,_ when it comes to lost souls. I couldn't believe he was either of these things, it didn't make any sense.

" _The arsonist and murderer Lemony Snicket,_ " I read again. "I understand better why you don't seem to care about my various achievements.

\- Olaf made me carry the can of his crimes, god knows how. It has taken so such proportion that I had to run away.

\- It was fourteen years ago." At least the newspapers dated from fourteen years ago. "I remember I was at the Baudelaire's wedding. It was fourteen years ago too.

\- It's but one of the various things that stood in my way, indeed.

\- This and the fact that Beatrice Baudelaire thought you were dead."

I put the cutting on the seat next to me and kept quiet. I didn't ask more questions about Beatrice – it was clear enough, even for me. He was following Beatrice's children because they  _were_  Beatrice's children and could have been, in a simpler world, his children. I wasn't going to rub salt on his wounds. Whatever you think of me, I had this respect. And I didn't want him to take revenge by mentioning Jacques.  _I never said I was selfless, did I?_

"And what about the Snicket file?" I asked, directing the conversation as far as possible from our respective grief. "Would it clear you?

\- It would at least accuse Olaf and his fellows. What would clear me has been hidden years ago. Hidden so well that no one knows where it is.

\- The sugar bowl." I had whispered without wanting it. I'd been carrying for too long without saying its name. "The  _infamous_  sugar bowl.

\- Yes, the sugar bowl. Lost in your house's fire."

_Or not._ I can't help being surprised that Lemony never resented me for hiding the sugar bowl from him, and keeping it under his very nose. I suppose he'd mourned this teeny tiny porcelain thing. It perhaps also explains why he never resented me for  _disposing of_  it the way I eventually did. We need to speak about it. We can't spend the rest of our lives pretending nothing happened in front of the High Court, can we? Especially since the world keeps on reminding us what happened.

Anyway. I spare you the trip. We drove for a long time, we went through roads smashed by snow and successive winters. But the HQ wasn't exactly accessible. I don't think it's useful to tell you how we reached it – given the place's state, I don't think anyone would find anything there, but still. I don't want that on my conscience.

When we finally reached the HQ, we found the place completely empty. No one around, while Lemony said we were supposed to find a dozen of people inside. There's nothing worse that being in an empty place when it shouldn't be. I mean, being alone in a bed is not sad per say, everyone know we sleep better alone. Being alone in a prison cell is not really pleasant, but there's nothing wrong about it. But being alone in one of the last place supposed to be used by VFD felt wrong and disturbing. And not only because I wasn't supposed to be there.

"Where are they?" I asked, going over the books of the library. "I thought…

\- I thought too. Let's not loiter.

\- I'm not searching for anything, personally…"

There was a gear noise. I raised an eyebrow and, after I gestured Snicket to do what he had to, I came closer. We both knew what it was but I couldn't help being surprised to find a piece of paper spat by some sort of technologic mail box.  _Appt Hotel Denoument STOP Friday STOP Last safe place STOP_ I analysed those words, frowning. I didn't know the Hotel yet, good for it, really, but it wasn't the problem. The last three words were the problem.  _Last safe place._ We were supposed to be in a safe place.

Haha. Too late, it wasn't a safe place  _anymore._ I called Lemony, my throat swollen and the gloomy feeling that we threw ourselves in the lion's den. Or the Arsonist's, but believe me, it's all the same. He didn't reply and forced me to look for him. He was in the middle of the living room, a file in his hand.

"If this is your damned file, let's get out of here.

\- What was it? The Dispatch?

\- See for yourself." I handed him the piece of paper. He tensed. "I don't know what happened here but…

\- The fridge.

\- The… What?"

Dumbfounded, I saw him rushing in the corridor. Of course I followed and found him kneeling in front of the refrigerator. I saw people doing very weird things, like running into flames instead of running away, killing each other for a sugar bowl, push women in a lake full of voracious leashes – well,  _a_  woman. But watching Lemony probing the  _refrigerator_  when we were supposed to leave, even taking into account everything I saw afterward, is one of the weirdest things I ever saw. He rummaged through the vegetables compartment and sighed, worried.

"They didn't leave dill.

\- Dill. Maybe they didn't like it?

\- It's a code, Cassandre. If they didn't leave anything, it's because they were supposed to come back.

\- The radiators are cold," I indicated. "They left a few hours ago.

\- Someone got them out."

Meaning,  _it's a trap._ Yes, I know it's already clear but just in case, you're not supposed to know what happened after. I know you can get the feeling that I don't care about what happened – and it's a bit true, I admit. But you have to know that VFD was, back then and still today, some sort of a mysterious nebula that only caused me wrong, sadness and too many grieves for a girl my age.

So when we heard the smash of a shattered door, Lemony ordered me to find a way to leave a message to VFD that the Arsonists wouldn't be able to find, and vanished. To slow them down, not run away – even if he was skilled in the matter. However, he did leave me with a simple yet unfeasible command. I knew  _nothing_  about VFD's secret codes. Nothing, but remember, I had a few pages from a file regarding Verbal Fridge Dialogue. It was a miracle, truly, that I remembered I had them: I went through my bag, got the papers and read them quickly while I heard footsteps, voices and hit noises getting closer and closer.  _Volunteers will know such a code is being used by the presence of Very Fresh Dill._  Thus Lemony's obsession regarding dill. As quietly as possible, I rummaged through every cupboard to find the said dill, then threw it in the vegetable compartment before resuming my reading. I had to engrave the receiver's name in the  _darkest of jam._

"VFD is fucking with us," I groaned while grabbing the boysenberry jam and a knife. I had no idea who was the receiver of this message. I knew no one from VFD apart from the Snicket. Lemony was with me and wasn't  _even_  a member of the organization anymore. Kit was god knows where. I took a deep breath and carved the initials J.S in the jam, hoping they would understand the message was geared towards VFD.

I now had to leave the actual message using olives for the date of the next meeting, and use their rigged spice-based condiment to refer to an encoded poem. I was going to write a post-it when I saw a book had been left in the kitchen – The Garden of Proserpine by Charles Swynburne. That would do. The jar of mustard mentioned it, so I put it in the fridge.

My paper stopped there. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I had to do with what's in the fridge –  _haha_ , and doing it quickly. Namely, writing on the poem's page (sorry, I  _did_  write on a book) that the meeting place was the last safe place. I was almost sure the Volunteers would get it. As for the Arsonists… I was left with Lemony's saying: people who read are good people. _It's your saying, right?_ I stuffed the book in the oven and spread what remained of a coffee on the said oven. The coffee stain technic, you know? A bit upgraded, but still.

I bounced back on my feet and walked to the door. It led to the library that overlooked to the Stricken Stream, completely frozen at this time of the year. It also and mainly led to two people, one of them reminding me of painful and distant memories. The man with a beard but not hair who chased me around the city. I gulped. I had to go through the library to find the exit, and I absolutely didn't want them to see me. He and his colleague, the woman with hair but not beard, were talking about the sugar bowl and the Snicket file.  _Mostly_  about the sugar bowl. I was searching for another way when I saw Lemony, at the other side of the kitchen, gesturing me to go. If I'd had another choice, believe me, I wouldn't have gone there.  _Even for him._ Especially for him.

But I didn't have the choice. I took a deep breath, took Olaf's knife in my pocket and what looked like a porcelain sauceboat – quite similar to the sugar bowl, to be honest. I had to divert their attention at any cost. If it meant throwing this thing through the window and making them believe I was sacrificing their precious sugar bowl, so be it. I infiltrated the library, behind them, the sauceboat in my second pocket and grabbed a desk lamp. As strongly as possible, I threw it against the bay window that cracked before it broke in a huge broken glass sound. The two intruders turned round. Strangely enough, I think I never felt more confident that this day.

"Are we searching for something?" I asked, getting my decoy out of my pocket. I shook it to make sure they wouldn't understand my trickery. "Something related to sugar?

_\- Dupin._ " The man with a beard but no hair smiled and drew up. "Be a good girl and give us the sugar bowl.

\- It so happens that my father really liked it.

\- You killed him.

\- I did." Said with such a lightness that I had a hard time being so natural. "And I don't want to protect the damned sugar bowl anymore."

Their eyes lighted up. I just had enough time to gain momentum and throw the sauceboat through the broken bay window. When she realized what I'd done, the woman with hair but no beard screamed and ordered her colleague to kill me. I already fought with stronger than me, but my wound was still fresh and I couldn't chance opening it again. I avoided his blows as much as I could, until I found myself cornered against a wall.

I don't like this kind of memories, really, and telling them is even worse. They confirm the already very-much confirmed fact that I am a murderer desperate to save herself – and ready to risk other lives in order to do so. The problem with this kind of affirmation is that we forget to remember that I only killed those who tried to kill me  _beforehand. Alright, the 667 Dark Avenue excluded._

Let's go back to our Arsonists. I managed to unfold my knife and stab him in the thigh. I struggled my way out of his grip while he yelped in pain and stepped back. I pushed with all my strength against the nearest sofa and rushed to the kitchen where I hoped Lemony had found a way out. But since my life is a disaster from end to end, you won't be surprise to learn that…


	17. Lie 16 : I need to be left alone

**Lie 16 : I need to be left alone**

Sorry for the interruption. I was writing on an old typewriter when one of my many enemies impolitely interrupted me in the middle of my sentence. It's rather funny to see that  _more people hate me_  than I do. A nice frozen bath in Lake Lachrymose soothed him, don't worry. Oh, it makes me wonder if I asked him whether or not he ate beforehand…

Never mind. Lemony. When I reached the kitchen, I saw him struggling with the woman with hair but no beard who was trying to grab the file that appeared from his pocket. My knife still bloody, I dashed on her to rip her from Lemony. She screamed, stunned, while I pinned her to the nearest wall. Trying my best to keep her still – and that wasn't simple, Arsonists jiggle very hard, I stared at her while I ask my  _dear_  unfortunate companio:

"A strap, if you please. Or whatever string you can find to keep her still." He didn't say anything. I sighed, annoyed. "I'm not going to do all the work, Le…

\- Cassandre."

His voice sounded like a warning and, suddenly, like Jacques'. I shivered and, slowly, turned my head. He was facing me, arms crossed behind his back by the man with a beard but no hair who apparently recovered from his knife in the thigh. Without a word, I twisted my catch's arms and turned her in front of them. I put my blade on her throat. She stopped jiggling.

There was a long, long silence during which the man watched me without a pause. Lemony's eyes didn't leave me either, but it actually didn't matter. The thing that mattered was that they were both gauging me, wondering if I would cut her throat, given the opportunity.  _Yes, the answer's yes._ But if I did, the man would do the same to Lemony.

"Take the file!" my catch yelped. "In his pocket.

\- Don't touch this file," I contradicted her. "If you do, you may as well say farewell to your colleague.

\- You wouldn't do it.

\- Watch me."

I slowly traced a red line with my knife all around the Arsonist's throat. She tensed and winced.  _No shit._ The man had his hand near the file, but he froze. Was it really worth a life? Given that I didn't really know what was inside, I couldn't say. But I wanted to believe a few pages couldn't be worth a life.

I know that the question that always comes back is  _did I really have to do what I did._ After all, Lemony was already dead for most people, it wouldn't have changed anything if he'd  _finally_ died here. After all, Lemony wasn't anything but a stern travel companion for me, back then. What happened in the bathroom didn't happen again and despite our conversation in the car, I didn't know yet how much we were alike. After all, his eyes were ordering me to give up on the damned file. But I didn't do it. And maybe it's the sign that I had definitively crossed the Schism line. Or, at least, that I danced flawlessly on this line.

When the man grabbed the file in Lemony's pocket, my hand acted on its own, as if to keep a promise. I felt the blood's heat on my hands, the woman with hair but no beard's body sagging in my arms and a dull nausea distorting my stomach. The man blinked and, while he was rendered unable to move by stupefaction, Lemony hit his wound with his foot. He yelled and ran – staggered, really, to the library, the file in his hand. I followed him without waiting to know if Snicket was fine and wiped the blood on my face. Blood sticks, if you wonder, like glue or overcooked rice.

"Give me the file," I croaked. "Or you'll end up like her.

\- I won't give you the time, bitch!"

What followed… Is what always follows the Arsonist, I suppose. He took out a lighter and, before me or Lemony managed to stop him, ignited the file. His toothy grin shined with dementia, as if the flames that already licked his fingers had awaken some feral instinct. He threw the burning papers on a sofa that, in turn, started to brun. I didn't have time to react: Lemony grabbed my sleeve and pulled me to the kitchen. He slammed the door and, without a word, opened wide a door I thought closed. He gestured me to follow him in the dark corridor it led to.

He slammed it again, enough for the corridor to echo the bang. If I'd looked behind me, I would have seen the door was covered with a complicated mechanism that couldn't be opened without answering three questions. But I didn't look. I followed Lemony to what looked like a chimney. But the top-down version of a chimney.

"We need to go down," he told me with a raspy voice. "There are not many grips and there may be smoke. Be careful.

\- The flames will reach…

\- The door is fireproof."

His tone didn't ask for a reply. He slipped inside the hole and started to climb it down slowly. With a last look around, and after having put my folded knife in my pocket, I followed him

The descent was awfully long, so I won't describe it. All you need to know was that the atmosphere was suffocating, that there weren't many grips indeed and the few that we managed to grab were inhabited by spiders, and that it took us long minutes before we reached our destination.  _To think the Baudelaire did the same trip the other way…_ But anyway.

If you've read Lemony's book, you know that we landed in a cave that would soon be occupied by a bunch of snow scouts. At this point in time, it was still empty and it was better off this way. He didn't take the time to dust himself or catch his breath and immediately walked to the cave's exit. I followed. It took us another few minutes to find the road and the taxi. And once found, another second to leave.

Sitting at the back like always, I kept quiet. Dazed would be a better world. My brain struggled to register what just happened within… What? Thirty minutes? Barely? As I was lowering my eyes to look at my hand, I felt my stomach getting knotted again. The blood on my hand had dried and came off my skin like confetti every time I moved. My sleeves were stiffen. My breath speeded up as I harshly brushed my hands against each other to get rid of any trace of what happened. I got rid of the jersey I was wearing. I didn't care about being half naked.

Bad writers always write that when their character killed for the first time, something _broke in them_  when their blade entered their victim's flesh. Afterward, most of the time, they kill like you would eat a tuna sandwich – not necessarily with pleasure, but without any hard feeling. Let me tell you something: it's all crap. Killing my father didn't break something in me, at least not the act of killing. Killing Olaf's henchman didn't break anything, didn't make anything easier. I'm not more capable of killing than I was when my greatest fear was my piano lesson. And when I have to do it, I don't feel better than I did when I found my way out the 667 Dark Avenue.

Even though I made sure I couldn't see any more blood, my hands were shaking. My skin was painful were blood had dried. My heart beat fast in my chest and I felt nauseous. I wasn't fine. Killing is not like eating a tuna sandwich.  _There's nothing like killing._

"Thanks," Lemony simply said, as if he had no idea how terrible I felt. "For what you've done.

\- For killing a woman?" I chuckled sinisterly. "You're welcome. After all I'm a murderer, am I not? One more murder is nothing, really.

\- You saved our lives. That's all that matters.

\- Oh yeah? Well, you'll tell that to Jacques if you ever see him again. He didn't see that as a good enough reason."

Jacques, Jacques,  _Jacques._ It's scary how he always comes back when I'm close to jumping from a bridge. Well, rather from a car. The other day it was an actual bridge – the one where I pushed my enemy into the lake, actually.

In a way, I know that I did could have been, or should have been, a vengeance. After all, this duo took my father from me more than Olaf did. They had triggered this absurd set of events. I'd got rid of one and the second was presumably seriously injured – why couldn't I be satisfied? The answer can be found a few lines above: a murder is  _never_  a way to feel better. If you're lucky and severely twisted, you may feel better for a few seconds, but then the horror of what you did eventually hits you. You never feel better after killing someone,  _even_ if you saved yourself,  _even_  if you got revenge,  _even_ if you didn't have the choice. One day, someone told me we always have the choice, and we just have to make the good one; I'd like to slap this person who evidently lived a very simple life.

"They were the…  _Bosses,_ if you can say it like that, of the other side of the Schism.

\- You should have told me! I feel so much better now that I know I got rid of a murderous arsonist by killing and burning her.

\- Your cynicism does not hide…

\- I'm not hiding anything." I looked away from my hand, closed my eyes and rested my head on the window. "Just drive and stop talking. I need to be left alone."

That wasn't true. I needed him, but I needed him to shut up. Lemony was trying to somehow help me accept what I'd done, no knowing that the best way to do it was to leave me alone. I needed a few hours, a day perhaps, to bury this murder very deep in my mind's meanders. But I couldn't do it alone. His presence, even quiet, even a bit contemptuous, reminded me I was alive and I could bury it all. Of course it would come back to haunt me from time to time, but it's just like any scar: you eventually get used to the itching. It's weird, right, to talk about a life's end as an itching? You also get used to that. You just need to be selfish.

He didn't talk to me for long, very long hours. I think I fell asleep at some point, and it was better like since I felt  _a bit better_  when I woke up. My mind was clearer and my hands were not burning anymore, at least. He didn't see that I was awake. I ran a hand through my hair and winced when I realized whole strands were gummed together.

"We'll stop in the first motel we'll find," he finally said. "Is that okay?

\- I suppose." I shrugged. And looked at him in the rear view mirror. "You're not tired?

\- It takes more than that to tire me.

\- Well, it was tiring enough for me. The VFD training includes resisting to stressful and potentially lethal situations?

\- Amongst others things."

I never spoke about childhood with Jacques. I guess we would have done it later, given the chance. As far as I know, the whole training stuff is more or less confidential and it's rather frowned upon to talk about it. I didn't figure out I was  _always_  in training myself, that my father and my teachers spent their time trying to teach me everything I had to know to react correctly in an emergency situation. I know what you think: it doesn't make sense. If my father  _really_  wanted to keep distance from VFD, why would he have trained me? Why was I supposed to begin my apprenticeship with Kit Snicket, the doom day when the world stopped turning? You have to ask him. I never quite understood. But without his insidious training, I wouldn't have survived all this. So I guess I owe him some gratitude.  _All things considered, no, I don't._

"Who trained you?

\- A woman.

\- Alright", I sighed. "Call me when you're in the mood of…

\- I thought you were more purposeful.

\- I'm tired of asking all the questions.

\- That is because you only ask the  _wrong questions._ "

An amused smile floated on his lips, as if he'd just come up with the  _funniest_  joke ever. I didn't understand it and still don't, but his smile at least showed he was in a relatively good mood.  _Good for him._  He glanced at me in the rear view mirror – poor mirror, it'd turned into our best communication medium, and rested his head on his clenched fist, his elbow against the window.

"She was called S. Theodora Markson.

\- Was?

\- Wrong question again." He paused. "Don't take that as a reproach. I was never able to ask the  _right questions._ At least that's what she said. She wasn't wrong, look at me now.

\- Are you close?

\- No really, no." I raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't mean I don't like her."

It actually did mean that he didn't like her, for me. Honestly I never had the time or the desire to dwell on this Theodora Markson. Everything I know about her – and it doesn't mean much, I know it from Lemony and what I randomly found during my researches on VFD. Since those information never really overlap (they mostly tend to contradict each other), I never cared much about them. Maybe one day I'll engage in the subject. Maybe I'll understand Lemony a bit better. Or maybe I'll realize that everything he told me was a lie. But anyway, that's not the subject. It took me a few seconds to continue.

"No one trained me." Well, as far as I knew  _back then_ , at least. "Even my father…

\- I believe my sister was supposed to be your chaperone.

\- She was the one… We were going to meet?

\- In all likelihood." He shrugged. "But you've already been trained. By your father, and by the teachers he appointed. He was a fairly good chaperone, before your birth.

\- You talk about him as if you knew him," I retorted, remembering what he said in the shower. "Is it the case?"

He lost his smile. More precisely, his smile froze. My dear father was well-known within VFD, not always for good reasons, and hated by the Arsonist, this time probably for good reasons. But even if everyone said they did know my father, when I asked about him, that was a whole other story. Some sort of awkwardness surrounded him, awkwardness probably caused by the fact that he literally set up his wife and mother of his daughter's murder. And still everyone say the  _right side_  of the Schism is flawless. Lemony eventually replied, perhaps because he wouldn't have appreciated to find himself in front of such awkward answer. Or lack of.

"I didn't know him very well. We weren't part of the same generation, and he was already a VFD agent when I went through my apprenticeship. He was one of the thinking heads, though.

\- And my mother?

\- She was younger than him." He sighed. "I knew her better, yes. We were acting together, Olaf, Beatrice Baudelaire, her and I. She was an excellent actress.

\- But how did she…

She was your father's apprentice. But he shouldn't have been her chaperone, let alone her husband. They were too… Different."

You don't say, Lemony. Most of VFD's records burnt, so checking this information was impossible. That being said, I believe him. If they'd been made for each other, maybe I would still have a mother, for lack of a father. Maybe it would have changed everything. Or maybe not.

Last time I talked about my parents with someone – under the guise of being interested by the history of  _the terrible Cassandre Dupin,_ the conversation ended up on a scornful gaze and a very simple sentence:  _a bad influence is always stronger than a good one anyway._ Which implied that I had turned like my mother instead of following my father's path, of course. But I can't believe it's all so simple, that my mother was a monster whereas my father was blameless. And I can't believe the contrary either, that everyone would lie, and that my father would be the monster and my mother, the glorious martyr. That wouldn't make any sense. So I find myself with my mother's label stuck on my face without even knowing what it means, if I'm a monster or if I have a few qualities left.

But at this point, it was not this aspect of her description that surprised me. It was rather what he said  _before._ Still the wrong questions, Lemony, right?

"She was an actress?

\- An incredible one," he let out. "On occasions she also wrote, but she preferred to act. She had this… Talent to turn any play into an interesting one, as long as she appeared in it.

\- Did you like her?

\- She was a bright woman, but she never learnt to ask the right questions." He smiled again. "You resemble her, actually. Not just physically.

\- I wouldn't be a good actress.

\- You already are."

Of course it wasn't  _just_  about the fact that my mother was a good actress. It was a whole package neither I or him wanted to talk about. It was a whole package that led my mother to an early grave, and a whole package that seemed, at least back then, to foreordain me for the same fate. I can't say if this idea saddened him, nor if it saddens him today, but it was disturbing enough for him not to imagine it.

Lemony, this man everyone believed to be a dangerous fugitive. Me being by his side didn't always do him good – but it did me so much good. I never said I was selfless. Will never be. That's exactly the reason why I'm going to meet him at Briny Beach, where everything that lost itself in the sea always ends up.  _My heart included._


	18. Lie 17 : I don't need you

 

**Lie 17: I don't need you**

It's been a week since the last time I touched this manuscript. A week spent with Lemony trying to trace the Baudelaire's journey, hoping to find them. I won't write anything about it. I don't want anything to fall into their enemies' hands – no one needs to know if they're still alive and, if they are,  _where_  they are. We… We owe them that much. We helpless guardians, pathetic liars and manipulators. We'll stop our researches when we know where they are and if they are safe. We promised it. I know what you're thinking: what can our promises mean?

Nothing, indeed. Of all the promises I made (I can't even remember them all, actually), I only kept half of them. Lemony almost never made any, but always kept them. I know only two of them, aside from the one we just made. The one he made to himself to always love Beatrice Baudelaire, and the one he made me a few days after what happened in Mortmain Mountains.

I wasn't planning on writing it. I thought it belonged to us, only us, and that for once, the world didn't need to know  _everything._ He told me I had to write it. That the tale wouldn't be complete without this promise. That no one would be able to understand who I am, who  _we_  really are if I didn't write about it. So here I am doing it, because he's a better writer than I am – and because I need to listen to him, every now and then.

The reunion in Hotel Denouement was supposed to take place two days after and we had stopped in a motel about ten minutes away from the said hotel. We could see its figure through our window. Lemony spent most of his time there, next to this window, writing in his notebook and compiling everything we knew about what would happen there.  _Spoiler: barely anything._ All we knew is that VFD would be there… Whatever the side of the Schism. Well, that's what happens when everyone use the same codes and the same hideouts. You get to invite people you  _absolutely didn't want_ to invite. We also knew that, following my sauce boat throw, rumours had it that the sugar bowl was within VFD's eagles' claws (I swear they trained some) and were supposed to drop it, I'll give you three guesses, in the Hotel.

You probably wonder what all of this has to do with the promise I promised you – haha, that makes a lot of promises for someone like me. It all happens after… Now, in fact. After a day spent in a deafening silence at piling in our notebooks all the clues and evidence we had (me more than him, actually, since I had a full bag of them). It was the evening and I'd just gotten out of the shower when Lemony came with two chock-full bags. I was wrapped in a towel, my hair was soaked up and I  _absolutely_  wasn't expecting him. Not that I was modest – he had already seen me naked quite a few times anyway. But still. I wasn't expecting him.

"We're going to a ball," he declared with a weirdly confident voice. "Tonight.

\- Tonight? B-But why?

\- Because it takes place in Hotel Denouement and we need to do a bit of reconnaissance there." He threw me one of his bag. "Slip this on, it should fit."

I had never been formally invited to a ball – this kind of things were for actual members of VFD, not those who never formed part of the organization and had a nasty habit of burning everything they got close to. But I already went to a few of them more or less officially and this time was an example. I'm not going to detail you my preparation, but I must say that Lemony had an eye for women's measurements. The dress he'd brought me fit almost perfectly – a bit too long, perhaps, and the shoes suited me. The only thing that surprised me was the mask I found under everything, at the bottom of the bag. It was some sort of venetian mask, made of porcelain, the kind that didn't show anything of the identity of the one wearing it.

Lemony was already done when I got out. He was wearing his own mask, quite similar to mine although his only hid his eyes. He gestured me to wear mine. He didn't comment on my clothes and I didn't comment on his even if I have to admit smoking suits him perfectly. This night a bit more than the few other times I've seen him wear one.

It was bit of luck, actually, that it was a masked ball since half of the surviving members of VFD were already at the Hotel  _and_  at the said ball. And  _yes_ , it doesn't take a great deal of perceptiveness to recognize someone behind a mask – again, we were lucky most of them were idiots. Lemony and I didn't make our entrance together, partly because I had to do some reconnaissance while he took care of the linen room, the kitchens and the staff rooms. I suspect he wanted to keep me out of his way, because there wasn't anything to spot except for the Denouement twins. At least I could listen to some conversations about me that made me smile. I was both a tragic heroin who saved the sugar bowl (if they'd only knew…) and a monster who burnt the HQ. And let's be clear, I didn't do it.

I was listening to Mr Remora and Nero talking nonsense about the sugar bowl when a mask came closer. Lemony, of course.

"Interesting party?

\- Did you know the sugar bowl actually held the location of a field of banana trees? Remora just told Nero.

\- He always has interesting theories," he smiled. "Are you dancing?

\- Am I… What?

\- It's a ball. You'll look suspicious if you don't dance."

Blessed be the mask I was wearing for having concealed my look of sheer stupefaction and my vacant look when he pulled me to the dancing floor where some couples already moved. Let's be honest, I don't know how to dance. I never learnt to, it wasn't part of my father's education. Lemony, on the other hand, knew how to move and I followed him. I had no idea  _why_  I was dancing with him, nor  _why_  he would do such a thing since everyone was now staring at us.

"For a dead man," I whispered low enough for the music to drown my voice. "You go out often. With a wanted woman in the middle of a ball, no less.

\- We're masked. And believe me, the best place to hide is under everyone's eyes.

\- You could have come without me. Why did you bring me?

\- We're looking for the same thing."

He didn't let me enough time to reply and swivelled me under the crowd's smiles and approving whispers. I felt as if I was in the middle of a turntable, as if the room was spinning around without ever stopping, faster and faster. It sounds silly, it sounds like I was living through my first date, but it wasn't anything like  _silly_  or romantic. It was closer to nausea and anguish than to romanticism. But anyway.

When he finally decided to put me back where I was supposed to be – which meant in his arms, I struggled to compose myself. Lemony, you can pride yourself on having me speechless for a few seconds. I don't think anyone can do the same. No one alive, at least.

"And what am I searching for?" I finally asked. "You seem to know better than I do.

\- Always the wrong question. You should have asked…

\- What you're searching for? I already know." I smiled, even if he couldn't know. "You try to protect Beatrice's children because you couldn't protect her. As well as what remains of your conscience, since she probably rejected you because it was shaky. I don't think I'm doing the same.

\- You're just trying to save orphans because you couldn't save Jacques. As well as what remains of your conscience, since he rejected you because it was shaky."

_Ouch._ I had it coming, to be honest: I was stepping on sensitive areas, he stepped on sensitive areas. I didn't say anything when the music stopped. We stared at each other, even though I could barely see his eyes and he could barely see mine. A second of wavering and he took my waist and I his shoulders for another dance. My head was still spinning, but I'm not certain it was because of the dance. Since the bathroom episode, and even if I'd have much preferred it wasn't the case, there was something strange between Lemony and I. This thing I won't stop describing as a gleam in his eyes which always reminded me of what I felt without knowing why. And I felt like I finally had my finger on it. Rather, that  _he_  just put  _my_  finger on it. I think he knew all that since the beginning and was now telling me with every delicacy he could. As for me, my brain probably refused to face the fact and understand that he was my reflection, hardly altered, and that it was for this exact reason he was still there – because I was his reflection, hardly altered.

"I am like you," I admitted. "And it's enough for you to trust me with this?

\- Don't be too kind with me. Doesn't it cross your mind that I could willingly keep you with me?

\- What could I bring you, apart from blowing your cover?

\- You kill my loneliness," he replied, strangely calm. "And you take my mind off things."

I let out a pitiful chuckle. I wasn't really surprised he considered me as a stupid girl, barely able to distract him from his run. After all, wasn't I following him for the  _exact same_  reason? He was an accommodating guy and he distracted me from my run. It must sounds uselessly mushy, but I still hadn't understood why we were the same, nor why we were still stuck together after the successive events of the bathroom and the HQ, let alone why he had spent all this time trying to get me on my feet. Because I wasn't more eager than today to accept what existed between us, I tilted my head and tried to lighten the conversation.

"Are you trying to say that you like me?

\- I think you know as well as I do that it's not about  _liking_." Poor try, really. "If I hadn't found you in the hinterlands, you would be dead.

\- Don't try to make me believe I saved your life," I retorted, out of despair more than anything. "You've lived alone for fourteen years.

\- Why would I have come to you if I didn't need anyone?"

For the first time in weeks, I felt my heart jumping. My head spun again, more than it was already spinning, and I clung onto him. The song that followed was a slow dance that justified my desperate move.

Desperate – that's what I was. It felt like living over again what I lived with Jacques, except he wasn't Jacques. His voice wasn't as soft, his arms weren't so delicate, his eyes weren't so kind.  _It wasn't him_  and in any case, I wasn't really myself anymore. Not really Cassandre. My heart screamed for me to accept what he was offering, at least a part of my heart. The one that survived Jacques and was thirsting for what he brought me back then. This incredible comfort you feel in the arm of a man (or a woman, for that matter), the formidable feeling to know you're loved, the almost too simple joy to know that, no matter what you'll do, someone will forgive you.  _Which in my case was only half-true._  But the one that died, the one that withered back in the Village of Fowl Devotees, couldn't even accept the idea. Jacques was dead, and the woman he loved was dead too. The woman I was, the woman I still am, didn't have the right to love, let alone be loved.

I gulped with difficulties, like a teen who wouldn't know how to respond to advances. It wasn't even advances, it was a mere observation and we both know how true it was. I couldn't deny it more than he could. But he accepted it. I didn't.

"You still love Jacques," he said. There wasn't any disappointment in his voice: this also was an observation, a simple, undeniable observation. "I'm not speaking of love. Neither I nor you would know how to do it.

\- Then what? " My voice sounded terrified, like a girl woken up from nightmares. "Why are you telling me this?

\- Because I have a promise to make. As long as I need you, I won't abandon you. Not like Jacques.

\- Not like Beatrice," I whispered. "And when you won't need me anymore?

\- Then you won't need me anymore either."

That was his promise. To never let me down – since it's what he meant, though he didn't dare or want to say it. He was trying to pose as the  _selfish villain_  who would toss aside his distraction as soon as he got tired of it. Much like I did, really. A shame that his acting and his mask didn't managed to hide how untrue it was. I didn't reply at first. I didn't know what to say. What could be said, anyway?

So I lied. That's what I do, isn't it? When I don't know what to say, I lied an promise at the same time. Something I must be the only one able to do. And he saw the truth in the lie, something he must be the only able to do.

"I don't need you," I repeated, as confident as can be. "Though I admit it's… Nice not to be alone and I don't intent to…

\- I hope you'll keep your promise.

\- I didn't promise anything, Lemony.

\- Of course you didn't." He smiled. Music stopped and he bowed. "Thank you for the dances.

\- Le…"

He slept away and vanished in the crowd, leaving me rooted on the spot in the middle of the dance floor, as if I were a poor girl ditched by her date. I felt  _terribly stupid, horribly annoyed, extremely ashamed, excessively distressed, atrociously guilty_ at once… And, for the first time since I let Jacques Snicket go, incredibly good. What I didn't feel, on the other hand, would be summed-up easily: alone. Despite everything I feel today, it's something I don't have anymore.  _I know_  I'm not alone anymore. I just need to call Lemony for him to come, and vice-versa.

And, with this absolute certainty in mind, I danced with people that would have thrown me in a pyre – and still would, probably. I assured them of my Very Firm Devotion to the cause, that I would be at the reunion and that the sugar bowl was my priority, of course. I hope you didn't miss the irony of the situation.

I was trying to avoid another dance with Charles –  _you know_ , Sir's  _partner_ , when Lemony reappeared. Charles was tangled in his explanations of how Lucky Smells Lumbermill worked when he authoritatively grabbed my arm, claiming  _he missed my presence_  with a stupidly fawning voice. Thank god my mask hid again the incredulous look I had. Charles bowed, still caught up in his speech and assuring he didn't want to cause any problems as Lemony dragged me in the corridor, away from the crowd.

"One of the twins has seen us," he bluntly said. "I don't know which one.

\- Funny how twins are indistinguishable…

\- Keep your sarcasms for when we're sure our cover's not blown.

\- What makes you think it is ?

\- I heard Frank or Ernest saying he spotted two associates ferreting around the corridors. It's enou…"

He got quite when someone appeared at the other end of the corridor. Two people whispering to each other, away from the party  _absolutely didn't look suspicious,_ did it? Especially as the  _someone_  was Frank or Ernest Denouement – in other words, the one who figured out what we were doing.

Looking back, my first kiss with Jacques was awfully romantic, worthy of one of those sappy movies where the heroin must face danger under her man's teary eyes. Well, given that my whole relationship with him was  _awfully_ melodramatic, I suppose it is only adequate that it began like this. No use of me telling you that it is not the case of Lemony and I, righ? One of the Denouement twins had spotted associates – the only way to make sure we weren't going to confirm his doubts or create new ones, if he wasn't the suspicious one, was  _not to look like_ associates. So I looked at the man, lifted my mask and quite literally lunged at poor Lemony who would have been less surprised by the sky falling on his head.

This said, you're not a good actor if you don't know how to improvise, are you? It didn't take more than a few seconds for him to play his part and run his arms around my waist. He even managed to hide my now-exposed face. Ernest or Frank walked past us silently, as this kiss looked less and less like a movie kiss – or a theatre one. And even when Lemony backed away as soon as the twin got out of view, the moment of hesitation we shared only reinforced the feeling.

"That's was… Original," he let out, putting my mask back on my face. "It drew his attention more than anything, though.

\- Someone told me that the best place is hide is under everyone's eyes."

He didn't roll his eyes – or perhaps he did, I couldn't see his eyes after all… He just turned round and went to the door. And I followed, of course. We reached the taxi and left the Hotel, leaving the party and its guests. We could still hear the music echoing in the hall and vaguely recognisable figures wandering behind the curtains.

If I were asked to choose the best evening of my life, I would choose this one, though at this point I was more troubled, embarrassed and annoyed than anything. It shines in my memories like the evening that marked the beginning of the end of all the horrors I'd lived through for months. Not that my life is better now – but it's always better when someone can understand you.  _Isn't it?_


	19. Lie 18 : I don't care about VFD

**Lie 18 : I don't care about VFD**

Newspaper described this day – as well as the one that followed, for that matter, as a  _terrible_ day. The Daily Punctilio wrote about a disaster, a waste. I must admit I can't contradict them here, it  _has been_  a disaster and a terrible waste. The problem is that they added details, at best useless, at worst completely untrue and that we can't use those articles as a basis to recreate the series of events. I can't even pretend I really know the chronology since I ended up  _participating_  to some of them. The only thing I can suggest to give some sense to the bullshits written in the newspaper, it's to consider it just like you were supposed to consider Hotel Denouement: through a mirror. Reverse the assertions, and you'll be close to the truth.

This day, this damned Thursday, hundreds of people had gathered around and inside the hotel. To draw from this fact the conclusion that they were all there  _because_  it was  _this_  particular Thursday would be hasty, but whatever the reason, those who were there  _precisely_ for  _this_  particular Thursday had mingled with the others so that it was impossible to distinguish them without knowing them. I had spotted some faces and some names during the ball and I knew the pseudo-sugar bowl was supposed to make an entrance in the evening. And, of course, that the Baudelaire were part of it.

At least that's what Kit told me when I finally found her around the leftovers of a picnic. She evidently wasn't waiting for me – she wasn't waiting for anyone, anyway. And I wasn't expecting her to be so easily found. Lemony had told me that she had found the Baudelaire on Briny Beach, and I thought I would only find some clues. Not her.

And I didn't think I would find her heavily pregnant. The way she looked at me, when she realized I was there, reminded me of a deer caught in the headlights. The kind of deer that could stick her teeth in my neck if I had tried anything. We stood motionless, gauging each other. The last Snicket – the first, in fact, in age. She looked more like Jacques than Lemony, without the unibrow. Her face showed the same tiredness than the latter, though.

"Cassandre Dupin," she let out with a tired smile that suited her look. "We should have met a while ago.

\- I know. Too bad you were late, you would have spared a few trifles.

\- I would have given much not to be, believe me.

\- Where are the Baudelaire?"

I wasn't in the mood of talking about the past, of what could have been but had never been, of what  _should have_  been but would never be. It wasn't the time. She looked at the leftovers of her meal and sighed. She looked fragile – too fragile to be the woman I pictured. She didn't look like the kind of woman to kill with poison darts during the interval of a play. She didn't look like the kind of woman to train kids to be part of a secret organization. She looked like a… Normal woman. A tired, wary, terrified woman. And pregnant, she reminded me of this obvious fact when she ran a gloved hand on her stomach. If she hadn't looked so similar to her brother, I wouldn't have believed it was her.

"They're already in the Hotel. Frank is waiting for them.

\- Frank?" I bitterly chuckled. "Or Ernest? Aren't you tired of using those kids?

\- We need every available Volunteers. The sugar bowl is almost there and it must not fall into our enemies' hands.

\- This is just a rumour," I backed up. My bag weighted heavier than ever on my shoulder. "And why don't you go yourself?

\- Snicket are in no one's good books since a great deal of time."

_And I am pregnant,_ she didn't say. She could have. At a pinch, I would have accepted this argument better than the other. I buried my hands in my oversize jacket's pockets and rested my back on one of the huge trees that surrounded us. All those I took for the leaders of VFD, all these women and men that I imagined pulling the strings of the events like a poor farce, all ended up looking like Kit. Sad, desperate, distraught. Powerless. The only ones who really controlled the situation were the Arsonists – and not for much longer.

I didn't have anything to say to Kit and I didn't want to see with my own eyes how much everything Jacques believed in was a damned smokescreen that withered every day a bit more. I had to go back to the taxi and prepare for what would follow. I slowly turned and walked away. Until I heard Kit's sad voice calling me.

"Cassandre. I am sorry for your father. And for Jacques." A shiver ran down my spine. "It's not too late to help us.

\- Every times I tried to help you, you always found a way to break me a little bit more. I regret, Kit, but the only ones I will help today are the Baudelaire.

\- This operation is VFD's last chance.

\- I don't care about VFD."  _Wrong._ We could say many things, but I cared. I hated VFD. But I cared. I stopped but didn't turn. I knew she had the same imploring eyes than her brother and I wouldn't have been able to resist them. "Just like VFD never cared about me. Farewell, Kit."

And I left. She didn't follow – I don't know where she went. But it was the first and last time I saw her. She would die, a few days afterward, on some lost island's beach. And I returned in the taxi. Lemony didn't ask questions, he just explained me the plan. He was going to take a passenger, a  _real one_ , to have a reason to wander around the Hotel. I would hide in the boot.  _I will take care of the suitcases, he won't see you._ And he would stay in the taxi.  _You do what you want,_ he told me, faking serenity. Oh, but he knew that if I did  _what I wanted,_  things would go wrong. But he also knew there was no way to stop me from doing what I wanted.

I won't waste time and tell you the details of the day. What you must know is that our passenger didn't ask for his suitcases and entered the Hotel without them. I got out only half an hour afterward and sat next to Lemony. He had given me a coat similar to his – dark, long, but suiting me, this time. We didn't speak once.

Until four silhouettes appeared, in full night, in front of the small pool that faced the Hotel. A tall one, two smaller and tiny little thing. I straightened and snatched Lemony's spyglass from his hands.  _The Baudelaire._ Obviously. And a tall lanky man.

"Dewey Denoument," Lemony said. "The last triplet.

\- Breaking news, they're triplets. You couldn't have said…

\- You didn't ask."

No, indeed. I watched them. Of course, I didn't see much and I couldn't help looking at the dashboard's clock. We were not Thursday yet. Almost. But not yet. And I stared at the Hotel's figure. The last safe place's figure. It took me months to understand the Hotel  _was not_  this safe place. It was everything that was  _under_  the Hotel that was safe, or at least, that used to be.

VFD's records. The incredible, formidable records of VFD. The collection of every researches made by ever members. In these rooms were the researches made by Kit Snicket about me, because yes, a  _second_  Snicket file existed. Or used to. Last time I managed to go to the archives, I couldn't find it. Most of the important files had been recovered or stolen. In these rooms were also the researches made by my father about my mother, even if they had also disappeared when I realized where they were. The tableau of all these lockers ripped open, knocked down on the floor, of all those sheets littering the ground, of those years of research still haunts me – not the way my father's or Jacques' last words haunt me. Rather like something I wish I had never seen.

Things started to speed up when a second taxi appeared and spew two familiar silhouettes – Jerome Squalor and Justice Strauss. Those two happy idiots had done incredibly good things for the Baudelaire. Incredibly good and so extremely useless that I can't help wondering if it wouldn't have been better for everyone to  _stop trying_  to help them. All these noble hearts, those Volunteers so proud and unable to act in an useful way… Everything that followed would not have happened if at least one of them had had the spirit to do something.

I don't need to detail what happened. Dozen of testimonies detailed it. Lemony wrote it. All I can say it is that when Esme aimed her harpoon gun at Dewey Denouement, I got out of the car. Contrary to what was planned, Lemony followed. Bathed in darkness, we came closer. I was going to step into the light projected by the Hotel when he grabbed my arm and stopped me, exactly when the Baudelaire ran and shielded Dewey from Esme, doing what no adult dared to do. Oh, I'm not pretending I would have done it for them – I could have run, escaped Lemony's hold and protected the librarian. But I never pretended I was a noble heart, have I?

"Wait," he whispered. "Wait."

So I waited. And the harpoon fired when the weapon hit the floor. History remembers that the Baudelaire fired it. Even in the dark, a few metres away, I saw that their only sin was to have failed to catch a harpoon gun  _no one_  could have caught. Lemony released me and we walked to the pool in which Dewey Denouement was slowly sinking before the Baudelaire's powerless eyes.

We kept clear of the crowd that was gathering around Violet, Klaus and Sunny amongst ludicrous screams and stupid cries. Lemony lighted a cigarette and came closer, managed to walk through the crowd and stopped behind them. I followed quietly, I didn't understand what he was doing, let alone why he was doing it. When the three children turned, they couldn't recognize us. We were in the shadow, Lemony's hat hid his face and I was hidden behind them. They stared at us.

"Taxi?" Lemony asked, showing not  _our_  taxi but the one that had brought the two jolly fellows. The kids exchanged a gaze.

\- We're not sure.

\- You're not sure?" I said. "Whenever you see someone in a taxi, they are probably being driven to do some errand. There must be something you need to, or somewhere you need to go.

\- We haven't any money.

\- You don't need to worry about money." Lemony leaned toward them. "Not if you're who I think you are. Are you?"

Yet again one of those moments that make me wonder what would have happened if things had been different. What would have happened if the Baudelaire had followed us this evening, if they hadn't given enough time for Poe to find them in the crowd? Would have they been happier, sadder? Would their fate be different? I can't answer those questions. I don't know if those children took the good decision when they let us go back to the taxi, and I don't know if those children would have been safe with us. If running from the law would have been easier than enduring it.

We left. We walked enough to go back to the shadow, away from the crowd. We could have set off – I could have set off. I could have given up the thought of saving them, considered that it was a waste of time because  _it was_  a waste of time. But I shook my head, once in our new taxi.

"I must go. They're not safe.

\- You won't be if you go.

\- I'm not safe since my birth," I retorted with a husky voice. "They will set up the trial. Against them. They won't win.

\- Obviously."

I glanced at him. His face was only lit up by the dashboard's gleam, so his face looked even more angular. Even more impressive. He was staring at the scene in front of him – the Baudelaire taken away by this poor joke of justice in Hotel Denouement. Olaf was there, they were all there, the stupidest, the noblest, the traitors, the worst and the best (though the best tended towards death lately). And soon I would be there too. The sugar bowl they were all looking for in my bag.

"Will you be waiting for me?

\- I'll be on the beach at the first sight of smoke.

\- There won't be any fire.

\- With you, there's always a fire."

I can even begin to tell you how right he was and how wrong I was. He eventually turned his head toward me and put his hand on my cheek. It was a strange gesture, coming from him. Caressing my cheeks like he did. Was he scared he would never see me again? Was he  _sure_  I wasn't going to make it either? I tried to smile and grabbed his hand. I squeezed it and left the car. I walked to the Hotel, in the crowd, my bag on my shoulder.

When I managed to enter, I stepped into an utter chaos. The Baudelaire had created that. They'd been recognized, of course, for the wrong reasons. Of course. I could barely see them from where I was standing and I tried my best to always be hidden behind a hat, a nightgown or a vase. When the decision to organize the trial the day after and to put the Baudelaire in room 121 until everything was ready was taken, I didn't wait for the crowd to clear and walked to the stairs.

I waited for a long time to make sure I wouldn't bump into anyone. Waste of time, really. I had only just stepped out of the staircase when I ran into Frank. Or Ernest. He looked hard at me for a while, and I couldn't tell whether or not he recognized me or not. His face, perfectly unshaken, didn't seem to hold any emotion. As if he was waiting for me to say something, anything to help him know if I was a friend or a foe.  _Neither,_ I wanted to say, but I just adjusted my bag on my shoulder and tilted my head.

"My condolences," I let out. "An unfortunate incident.

\- Thank you. Are you who I think you are?

\- If you are who I think are, then yes."

He didn't look happy with my answer, but nodded. He shifted and let me by. I waited for him to disappear in the stairs to reach the 121. The door was thick – too thick, a bit too much for a hotel room. The lock was too complex for me to pick it, even with all my dexterity in the matter. But there was a slit under the door, barely big enough to let a ray of light pass. Just enough for me to lay down on the floor and press myself against it.

"Baudelaires," I called them. "Baudelaires, come closer.

\- Who…

\- It's… It's Cassandre." I hadn't uttered this name for such a long time, it almost felt like it wasn't mine anymore. "I came to help you.

\- Cassandre ? But you're…

\- There's no time for that, Violet. I'll be at your trial. I'll help you escape. My… Associate will wait for us outside."

Silence lingered. Just like a dozen of minutes ago, they were conferring, trying to know if they could trust not a stranger this time, but the girl who promised them months before that everything would be fine and that she would find them. A girl they thought dead, murderous and missing. A girl they had not seen since a hospital burnt.  _A girl who didn't look any more trust-worthy than a complete stranger._

"They're against us, all of them. We should…

\- Believe me when I say, Baudelaire," I sighed. "That those people wouldn't separate cheese from the Moon, even if they'd stuck their nose in it.

\- But running is not a solution." I didn't sigh again but god I wanted to. "Our parents…

\- Your parents were not perfect. No one is. Being noble is an incredible thing, but it only goes so far. You must save  _yourself._ "

Another silence. Hearing all day long that VFD used to gather formidable volunteers with a noble heart makes you want to become one, obviously. The Baudelaire  _were_  noble hearts and I think they still are, wherever they can be. And I suppose that, contrary to me, they still needed to hear they weren't lost, they were still noble, they would forever be and even if they weren't as noble as they used to be, it still was enough. Lemony never bothered to tell me those things because  _I know_  I've lost it all long ago and I'd probably never be noble anyway.

But I understood them. They had suffered many torments, but they never did anything wrong. Never. Of course, Caligari Carnival had burnt behind them. Of course, they'd lost the Quagmire. Of course, Jacques died when they were in the Village of Fowl Devotees. Of course they had to lie. But they would have died if they hadn't do it. If, like I did, they'd yield to ease or anger, frustration or sadness, they would have gotten by fine but at the cost of their nobility. They were the lightest side of a coin, and I was the darkest. They were still entitled to light – I could only have shadows. And yet I was free from their dark cell, in a blinding corridor. Irony truly is everywhere.

"I'm not asking you to trust me," I whispered. "I ask you to do what's necessary. You deserve to make it.

\- You'll be there?

\- I will. As close to you as possible." I kept quiet for a few seconds. "Try to sleep."

I stood up and, slowly, went back to the staircase. The night would be long, very long. And I had no idea the day that would follow would be just as long, as well as the following night and day. I had no idea that I was getting to the end of my own story – at least, Cassandre Dupin's story.


	20. Lie 20 : I'll end you

**Lie 19 : I'll end you**

I've never been much to the theatre in my life, maybe once or twice with my father when I was a child but really, that's all. Yet I lived through enough ludicrous and tragic situations to be able to write a master piece – you don't need me to know that my whole life is a stupid play. But nothing I could write would get even close to the Baudelaire's trial.

Well, the trial. That word is as unsuitable to the circumstances as the world "fair" would be to describe our world. It was a mascarade, a poor joke, you'll find synonyms yourself if you want (I know Volunteers  _love_  it). Of course I had to wear this stupid mask that blinded me and made me enjoyed to a hundredfold the screams of the crowd during the whole audience. I don't exactly know next to whom I was sitting – I didn't care, really. I knew Olaf was nearby. I also knew the Baudelaire were. I heard a few familiar voices but honestly, I couldn't tell where their owners were placed.

_I swear_  I didn't do anything for a while. I forced myself to keep quiet when the whole room wanted to give evidences of the Baudelaire's guilt. It's only when they began their tale and Justice Strauss stopped talking that I understood something was off. I took off my mask, furtively enough to ensure no one would notice, while the kids were recounting their awful story. And I saw where the judge was. Wrapped in Olaf's arms. Obviously. I crept in between my bench and the one in front of me and, slowly, managed to reach the central alley. He was too busy to notice me so I took my knife (well, still his) out of  _mere caution_  and got closer. I gave Violet a gentle nudge to make her react.

"They took off their mask!" one of the magistrate screamed. He was the man with a beard but no hair who apparently had survived the fire of Mortmain HQ. "The Baudelaire and this woman… This murderer!"

A turmoil grew in the room while I pounced on Olaf to take the harpoon gun from his hand. He struggled, pushed me hard enough to make me fall and have the time to reach the elevator. Thank god, the Baudelaire were always clever and pounced on him too. They blocked the elevator to be able to take it. You may wonder how everything happened in such a crowded place, but I remind you that they all had a mask – court offense, all this mess, you know? I barely had enough time to bounce back on my feet and sneak between the elevator's doors before it began its descent to the basement.  _He wants the sugar bowl._

"Well Cassandre, I thought you were dead," he grinded, his eyes on the knife in my hand. "You're running after the sugar bowl?

\- You're running after a failure.

\- Ha! Their mother told me the same thing, back then." He burst out laughing – barked was more adequate. "And who ended up burning in her house's flames?"

I couldn't reply – the elevator reached its destination. In spite of themselves – and myself, the Baudelaire and I followed Olaf to the laundry room's door. He didn't have the answers to the Vernacularly Fastened Door, obviously, he wasn't either clever ou cultured enough, but he had the judge. The stupid, imbecile, naïve judge that, since the very beginning, had helped Olaf follow the Baudelaire by telling  _every each one_ of their woes to the woman with hair but no heard and the man with a beard but no hair.  _How brainless do you need to be to do such a thing?_

I knew that the sugar bowl wasn't inside the laundry room, of course. I was going to give him every answers to his questions to spare the children and the brainless judge, to show again that I wasn't either noble or a Volunteer. I was expecting quite everything, except what Klaus said.

"I'll tell you what the first phrase is.

\- You will?" Even Olaf looked dumbfounded.

\- Certainly. It's just like you said, no one ever did anything for us. Everything gave up on us, even the good people, even the noble hearts. Why should we protect the sugar bowl?

\- Klaus, no," I intervened. "I'm…

\- No, Cassandre."

I let him do it. I let him type the medical condition they all shared and I let him type what had left Olaf an orphan – and killed my mother too, and I let him type the  _famous unfathomable question in the best-known novel by Richard wright_. I let him do it because who was I to stop him from saving his sisters? I let him do it because, when his sisters asked him  _why_  he was helping Olaf, he smiled and said that the sugar bowl wasn't there. Especially for this reason.

There's always feel a strange pleasure in seeing someone you don't like trampling on his own nobility. Like, I don't know, any stupid Volunteer. I didn't care about mine, but knowing that Klaus Baudelaire wasn't setting his own on fire,  _dramatic irony,_ comforted me. So I let him do it, let him enter the laundry room to see that the sugar bowl was, indeed, not there. I watched Olaf walk around, rant and wave while I weighed my bag. Happy for the first time that the sugar bowl was inside.

We often say – well, Justice Strauss often says, that it's at this point that the Baudelaire crossed the line. When Olaf decided to release the Medusoid Mycellium in the Hotel to kill Volunteers and Arsonists, noble hearts and criminals alike. When he decided to escape on the boat that was still in the rooftop's swimming pool. When Violet offered her help in reaching the sea without damages. When, a few minutes after, Sunny Baudelaire offered to burn the Hotel.

And I agree with her, for the first and probably last time. At this point, the Baudelaire understood that no one would help. That they were alone. So indeed, they crossed the line – the line of childhood. Once and for all.

"Olaf, will you stop laughing," I ordered under the judge's aghast eyes. "There's nothing funny in this.

\- You kidding? Those kids are following my path, and willingly that is!

\- Call the elevator instead of fantasizing on heirs. And hush this imbecile.

\- No!" she screeched. "I'll do everything in my power to…

\- There's nothing in your power, you senseless fool!" She shut up, terrified. "You never had any. You surrendered those kids to Olaf for months, your dear Volunteers run in circle screaming in the lobby. And you think you can do anything with your stupid book?!"

A long silence lingered. Olaf stared at me for a few seconds, a tiny smile on his lips as if he'd realized I also followed his path. At last. He laughed again and grabbed the judge by the shoulder, his harpoon gun aimed at her.  _Help them start this fire. You're quite skilful,_ he said with his crueller voice. I gulped and turned to the Baudelaire who were staring at me too with pleading eyes. Lost eyes. I smiled and started to spread sheets on the floor. I was grabbing a stain remover can when Olaf stopped me.

"No, actually, no. Let them do it. The kids must learn.

\- No way, Olaf. They already did too…

\- You're scared for their conscience?" He laughed. Again. "Come on. Hearing this from you is just so funny. You weren't this careful when we got rid of Josephine, or back in the Hospital…

\- It has nothing to do with anything. My conscience…

\- I'm bored," he winced and aimed his weapon at me. "If you move, I shoot. Go ahead, orphans, finish what she began."

And they did it, because those children were the only noble persons left in this lowly world. They just learnt I was involved in their aunt's death and in the fire  _they_  were blamed for. If it'd been me, I wouldn't have done anything. I would have let him shoot. But didn't I say it enough? I'm  _not_  noble. When they were done covering the sheets with the stain remover, Olaf threw the judge's book, his eyes and weapon still on me. He eventually lowered it and threw me a box of matches.

"Finish the work, deary," he said with an awfully sweet voice. "Destroy VFD.

\- I'm not following your orders.

\- You know I wouldn't be sad if you died. Maybe I would regret the waste.

\- But I won't die." I burnt the match and threw it behind me without looking. "I promised to kill you."

He smiled the widest smile possible and burst out laughing. He took the judge with him in the elevator and I looked at the Baudelaire. They turned their eyes away. Congratulations. You lighted your first fire – at least, you were involved in it. I hope you'll recover better than I did. But I have no doubts of it since their first reaction, once in the elevator, was to push absolutely every buttons. I didn't comment but put my hand on Violet's shoulder for a few seconds, long enough to make her understand it was the best idea they ever had.

At every floor, they shouted fire. At every floor they received different answers. Some believed them, others didn't. But the elevator always proceeded with its rise to the rooftop, with us inside. I don't know what I thought I would do, once on the roof, apart from watching Olaf getting away with everything he did again. And see thick black smokes rising in the sky.  _Lemony will be on the beach,_ I thought. The idea comforted me. Only a bit.

Because I indeed saw Olaf getting away with everything thanks to the children's help. The children he'd been chasing for months. They were preparing the boat when he got closer to me and grabbed my arm. I stared back at him for what looked like an eternity, enough time for him to look for something in my eyes and find it.

"You'll take for me," he whispered to my ear. "For me and those kids. Like Snicket did for you. I hope you'll suffer the same fate.

\- I told you Olaf." I took off my knife and ran in on his chest, just enough to scratch his skin and see a red ribbon appear. "I'll end you."

He grabbed my face with his enormous hand. For a second I thought he was going to kiss me – god, no, but he only stared. And then he went to the Baudelaire. They looked at me one last time, as if they were wondering if they should asked me to come with them. I shook my head and watched Justice Strauss screaming to her legal gods that she would  _never let them run away._ I understood that I wasn't any better than every adult they'd had in their life with their good will and beautiful speeches. Like them, I had promised them the world. Just like them, I failed them. Even if I stopped them from leaving, I wouldn't be able to protect them because I couldn't even protect myself. But… They were able to save themselves. So I did, for the first time in ages, what I had to do.

Without a word, I grabbed her gown and pulled her backward while the Baudelaire's ship sunk in the vacuum beneath the Hotel and brutally hit the waves. And they disappeared from my eyes as fast as irremediably. I felt like it was the last time I saw the Baudelaire, but not the last time I saw Olaf. This thought is more depressing than the thought of the Hotel burning under my feet. I don't know what they remember about me today – the smiley young girl from before? the less smiley one who told them she had to go home? the one who helped them save Violet? or the more violent and sinister one who helped Olaf run away, kill their aunt, set fire to every safe places without any regret? I hope I'll see them again, one day, to apology. I owe them this much. Though I did find them, and kept my promise, nothing went well. And nothing well ever go well.

And the Hotel was slowly oscillating like a tired bird. I couldn't stay on the roof if I wanted to survive this fire. Without listening to the judge's laments, I rushed in the elevator regardless of the safety advices, and pushed the first floor button. Smoke had already started to fill the small cabin and I almost ran short of air – a few more seconds and I would probably have collapsed.

A mass panic ruled the lobby and I had to navigate between the knocked down benches, the piles of files and the blinded witnesses – because of course they didn't take off their mask, to find the door and some fresh air. Well, fresh. It was saturated with smoke and I could hardly see in front of me. I walked away, coughing and suffocating, far enough to be able to see the beach. Lemony wasn't there. I don't know why but I turned back. I watched the Hotel burning.

Of all the things I saw, all the horrors I witnessed, every fires I couldn't avoid, Hotel Denouement's arson was the worst thing I ever got to see, even back when I didn't know what was hidden under its foundations. I didn't even hear or feel Lemony coming for me, contradicting what we decided. He didn't need to search for me, I was amongst the first, well, the first one really, to get out. I had surrendered the Baudelaire to Olaf. I didn't fight for them because I realized I wasn't any better than the judge, Jerome, Charles and all the others. But I didn't know what was going to happen – not at all.

I stood still next to Lemony the whole time it took them to evacuate, until the arrival of the firemen. The actual ones, of course – the Volunteers never came. They saw the smoke. They decided, as always, to jump to the easiest conclusion. I didn't realize I had grabbed Lemony's hand. I didn't realize I was squeezing it. He also did it, more softly. My eyes were lost in the flames. They were slowly dying and everything that remains was ruins. Fuming, desolated ruins. I didn't feel any sadness for the Hotel, or for the consequences of this fire. I was terrified for the Baudelaire. For myself, even if I didn't know why. I soon learnt.

"We must go," Lemony told me. "Before they…

\- Who did that?!

\- Why would anyone do such a thing?!

\- It's the Baudelaire!"

_Before they start asking questions._ It's exactly what Lemony feared. I nodded and we slowly walked away to the taxi. Until my name echoed and I froze. Silence fell on us and I felt the hand in mine tensing. History was repeating itself, as Olaf had predicted. I took a deep breath and turned back. The crowd was looking at me.

"It's her," the man with a beard but no hair claimed. He was still dressed-up as a judge – how convenient. "She killed Jacques Snicket, she helps the Baudelaire since the beginning!

\- She helped them escape!

\- She's a murderer!

\- A villain!

\- An arsonist!"

I spare you the rest. Lemony didn't turn, but he ordered me to run like my father before him. To run. To take the car. To disappear.  _Oh, Lemony._ Irony is everywhere in this world. Jacques didn't listen to me when I told him the same thing. I didn't listen to you. But you know what it would have meant if I'd listened. You would have taken for me. That was  _my_  fate. For the first time in long, very long weeks, my mind was clear. I'd been running the whole time. From Olaf, the Volunteers, the Arsonists. They took everything from me. I had nothing left to lose, but I still had something to take from them. This thing that weighted in my bag since my father was taken from me, this thing that justified so much bloodsheds and so many fires, this thing that was tearing them apart – I could take it from them.  _You'll bring me my bag,_ I told Lemony before I walked to Justice Strauss who had managed to escape too.

"You… You…

\- Silence," I ordered her drily. "Arrest me. Judge me, since that's what you do the best.

\- Judge her!

\- Don't judge her!

\- Judge her deeds!

\- Judge her face!"

I hate crowds, especially when I need to hide in it. This one called me every names, made be capable, guilty of everything. I wasn't listening. I was staring at the spot where the taxi used to be. Before they took me, I looked at the fuming shell of Hotel Denouement and smiled. It was an adequate ending.

It was more than adequate to end this mascarade under the still threatening shadow of the last safe place that was already so unsafe. If you wonder what happened to it, it's been levelled and replaced by a smaller hotel, even fancier. They kept the pond, obviously – when you know what's underneath, it's only fair, but not the name. The new owner named it Hotel Hope and it's the new Volunteer's meeting place. I don't think the Arsonists know. Anyway, while Hotel Denouement was still called Denouement and while its skeleton still loomed between me and the ocean that had eaten away the Baudelaire, I was satisfied that things ended there. I almost thought I would be judged there. Obviously I wasn't.

Just like it was high time to end this mascarade, it will soon be time for me to end this tale. Not just yet, though. Soon.


	21. Lie 20 : ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N : Last chapter! Enjoy the chapter, and find me at the end for more informations on what's to come.

**Lie 20 : …**

I realize that I passed over entire months in silence, and still those last  _chapters_  succeed one another quickly even though they only regard a relatively short period of time. But I guess things rushed for me, VFD and in general. It's a bit weird, really, how everything speeded up and still I remember those few days as the longest of my life.

I feel like I spent an eternity in this damned crowd before they ended up putting me in a cell whose door I could have picked in five minutes. I feel like they left me alone for another eternity. I feel like it took an eternity for Lemony to arrive, my bag on his shoulder. I feel like it took him an eternity to reach the bars. I smiled to him, but it took him an eternity to smile back and speak.

"What game are your playing?

\- I have a last card to play. It's inside this bag.

\- What…

\- At the bottom."

I watched him diving his arm inside my bag's mess. I watched him frown, take the package, hand it to me. He didn't ask what was this thing wrapped in another bag, this little thing with indistinct contours. He let me take this thing and stuff it in one of my pockets. I didn't answer his lack of question. He would know soon enough.

He finally raised his eyes and stared back. He didn't understand – could I really blame him? I'd been running away from anything close to justice to throw myself in the worst pseudo-court I could find. I wasn't suicidal, at least not as far as he knew. It couldn't make any sense in his mind.

"Come tomorrow," I asked him. "I want you to be there.

\- There for what? Watch them lynch you?

\- You know me better than that, Lemony. If everything goes well, I will get out of here as fresh and dashing as I am now.

\- And if everything does not go well?"

He frowned. I was too careless for him. Even for myself, I have to admit. But I had lost my last purpose, I saw it set sail from a hotel's roof. The only thing I had left, I didn't want it anymore. And I wasn't going to just throw the sugar bowl down the drain. It deserves better.  _It deserved the fires we started for it._ It was adequate. I can tell you now that it really was.

I rested my head between two bars and sighed. I didn't want to lose Lemony – I didn't want him to disappear. I was certain I wouldn't be able to find him and I was right. He's the one to find me whenever he wants to - I can only find him when he wants me to. He looked at me, unmoved. I wasn't expecting this much anyway.

"If everything does not go well, you'll have another story to tell.

\- I am not joking, Cassandre. The Arsonists are suspicious, they know you're up to something," he retorted. "They won't let you speak. You'll be lucky if you reach the hearing room alive.

\- I know what they do to those whose voices they don't want to hear, Lemony.

\- Then  _why_  are you playing with fire? You better than anyone know that you'll end up burning yourself."

He was right – obviously, he was right. But it was the point. I didn't take into account my very numerous enemies on the wrong side of the Schism, but I knew things  _wouldn't_  go well. My enemies, my supposed allies, even those I didn't know, none of them wanted a kid who definitely knew too much about them around, but they did not want to be blamed for her death either. Blaming  _her_  for avoiding her own trial, on the other hand…

You see what I'm hinting at? If not, you'll soon understand. It took a few seconds for Lemony to get it. He slowly shook his head and a vague smile distorted his lips. I chuckled.

"Do you realize how dangerous this plan is?

\- I know. How long since the last time you threw yourself heart and soul in a shaky plan?

\- Fourteen years." He kept quiet for a few more seconds. "I'll be there.

\- Good. I still need you, don't fail me.

\- Don't die. I still need you too."

We shared another glance before he vanished again in the corridor's shadows. I didn't sleep - of course I didn't. And I wouldn't have had enough time anyway.

They came for me a hour or so after Lemony's departure. Outside, the crowd was restless again. It was almost as if no one had left. They took me out of my cell, and forgot to tie my wrists. I was greeted by fresh air and early morning. I didn't understand why they came so early, at first – it's the smell that made everything clear. The smell and the smoke.

Two fires in less than two days, I mark it as a record. The man that held my arm put me in front of the great building of the High Court, in front of the vivid orange flames that licked the sky. The judges were outside, whinging, asking what was going on. Well, Strauss did. The two others, the man with a beard but no hair and his colleague that I didn't recognize, stared at me in silence.  _How suspenseful, who set this fire?_

"Get her closer, let her see what she's done!" They ordered my human hinder. He pushed me in front of the judges. "Wasn't it enough to burn Hotel Denouement? You also needed to burn the High Court?

\- Answer your own question. How is your leg?

\- Silence!" He wanted to slap me. That much was clear. "Your trial will take place here and now, so that everyone can see the full extent of your felony."

_Haha._ I looked at Strauss. She turned her eyes away, as if the mere fact of looking at me reminded her of everything she'd seen me do in Hotel Denouement, everything Olaf had done, everything the Baudelaire had done. But I didn't turned my eyes away. I saw her shivering and moving next to the  _colleague._ This woman was swift to condemn a monster she didn't dare look in the eyes. I don't know what happened to her afterward. My optimism would say she must have left the Volunteers. But I doubt it – she's the perfect inane Volunteer, clinging onto ideas she does not even understand. But anyway.

In front of the flames that still devoured the building, the judges listed the charges, one by one.  _Arson, murder, escape, complicity in murders and arsons…_ The list was long and I barely listened to it. I was searching for Lemony. I hoped he didn't leave to rest, I hoped he was…  _Still there._ And he was. He was in the middle of the crowd, my bag on his back, a cigarette between his lips, his long trench and his hat. He was staring at me. He was waiting. I didn't recognize anyone else in this crowd, but it didn't matter.

They eventually asked me if I had anything to say for my defence. It wasn't a trial – it was a forum. In their mind, I was going to throw away everything I thought I knew about them, about everyone around me (there were a few Volunteers who came especially to see what would happen to me). They would then produce false evidence or simply insist that  _I had killed Jacques and set fire to two buildings in the same day._ Even if I'd been locked inside a cell the whole night. Who said they were smart?

I didn't say anything for a while. I walked up the court's stairs, got closer to the flames. They were already dying, for lack of things to burn. The building was almost already collapsed. They watched me as you would watch a demon preparing some  _demonic_  spell. I took the sugar bowl from my pocket. And I started to speak while I got it out of its bag.

"I won't reply to those charges, because I know you already found me guilty of half of them. I won't utter any charges against you, because it would be pointless and I would be losing precious time." They frowned. The crowd started to fuss around. "I know why you came here. You came seeking for the trial that didn't occur yesterday, or the one that should have occurred today.

\- Enou…

\- But I know some others came for a very different reason. This."

I took the bowl from my bag and showed it. The silence that followed lasted an eternity too. There wasn't a move, not a sound except the flames' behind me. Every stared at the teeny tiny porcelain thing that had warranted all these horrors. Some stared because they didn't understand what a sugar bowl could possibly mean. Other stared because they thought Olaf had it. Others stared because they thought it was in safety. And Lemony stared at me and I stared at him.

Until silence turned into some sort of a rumbling and roaring thunder, until everyone started to move in every directions, until some of them ordered others to seize me, or the sugar bowl, or both, to give them the sugar bowl, or destroy it, or let them destroy them, to take it away, or take me away, or take me away with the sugar bowl…

"You won't do anything with this sugar bowl," I almost screamed above the uproar that immediately quieted. "I don't know what's inside and I'm almost certain half of you don't know either. All I know is that you lied, manipulated, started fires, killed to have it.

\- That's not true!

\- It is. Isn't Esme Squalor there?" I received no answer. I learnt later that she'd died in the Hotel's fire. "If it's not true, then you won't mind if I…

\- NO!"

The scream came from everywhere at once. Almost two third of the crowd suddenly understood that I was serious when I pretended to throw it in the flames. The first rows came closer as I held my hand almost  _in_  the flames. I just needed to open it for the bowl to break and its content to burn with the rest of the court. For good measure, I stepped back and felt my back getting even hotter. They stopped. All of them. And Lemony was still staring at me.

He knew – still knows, I suppose, what was in the sugar bowl. He also knew that it was important. He would have been the only one I would have listened to. But he didn't say anything. He allowed it to happen. Accepted. I smiled and, as if encouraged, I continued.

"An incredible kid told me a few hours ago that no one ever did anything for him and his family. That everyone gave up on them, even the good people, even the noble hearts, and that he had no reason to protect the sugar bowl." I saw, from the corner of my eyes, Strauss straightening her posture. She knew what I was talking about. "I will repeat these wise words. When the Arsonists took my father from me and burnt my house, only one man helped me. He was taken from me by the same Arsonists, who then blamed me for his death, and later on for every crimes they committed. The Volunteers, so rightful, so noble, didn't try to understand. They blamed me too." I gritted my teeth when I felt my skin burning. "And all this time I was protecting the sugar bowl. I thought I would give it to the first noble heart that would listen to me. He never came. Rather, he came but is now gone."

I don't know how I managed not to cry. I was in some sort of a strange trance, I spoke as I write today. I said what sounded necessary, what sounded right. And no one stopped me. They could have shot me, but the sugar bowl would have fallen. One wrong move and I would release it. Status quo.

I took a deep breath and I smiled the most luminous smile I could. I looked at the sugar bowl that had followed me everywhere without me opening it or talking about it to anyone. I printed its image in my memory and turned my eyes to the crowd before me.

"You took everything from me. It's my turn to take everything from you."

Time slowed down. I released the small porcelain bowl in the flames. With a barely audible noise, it broke before I crushed its contents with my heel. Behind me, the flames briefly redoubled in intensity and I felt the back of my coat and my heel burning dangerously. A dozen of people dashed on me – rather on the now invisible remains of the sugar bowl. The judges were part of them.

When time went back to its usual speed, I sneaked between the legs, between the arms, the screams ( _take it, leave it, it can be saved, it's pointless, I'm a Volunteer, I'm not…_ ) and I managed to run away from the still burning court. I suddenly felt a hand grabbing mine, heard a voice ordering me to run and, this time, I obeyed.

And we ran while the whole town seemed to move toward the court, the whole world, even God himself. The deluge was behind us and we ran without stopping until we reached the edges of the city. To the place where everything began, where I should have met Kit Snicket and begin my apprenticeship in VFD to become a perfect Volunteer. The place where the Arsonists had entered my life to never leave. Lemony chose an empty taxi, took a key and switched on the engine. He threw my bag on the backseats, left every doors open and came back to me.

"I'll only ask you once. Was it the true sugar bowl?

\- Yes.

\- I see."

He nodded. He believed me – he always believed everything I told him. And he was right. I wasn't lying. Extensive researches on the sugar bowl, well, the sugar bowls since fake ones would soon be produced, proved it. He gestured the backseat door. I smiled and nodded too.

I was going to sit when he grabbed my arm and put his two hands on my shoulders. I stood still and stared at him. He did the same, at length, as the sun rose behind me. And I didn't move. And I realized he didn't look so much like Jacques. His face wasn't thin at all, his face was too angular. His gaze was way sadder, his eyes, way more distant. His body was stronger, thicker. Their likeness stopped at their voice, but I didn't understood it until that day.

"You don't look like him this much," I uttered. "I thought so but… No. Why didn't you tell me?

\- You wouldn't have believed me.

\- True. Where are we going?

\- We need to know where the Baudelaire are. We both have a promise to keep."

I smiled again and nodded. He looked around, took off his hat and put it on my head. He wasn't the last person to strangely disappear anymore – I was this person. This time, I grabbed his arm when he tried to go to the car. I didn't grab his arm to stare at him, but to find my way in his arms. Without asking for any authorization. Or permission.

He would have given it. He gave it to me, in hindsight. After a second of hesitation, he wrapped his arms around my back and let me rest my head on his shoulder. I wasn't forgiven for all the lies I said. I wasn't forgiven for the help I gave to Olaf and the Baudelaire. I wasn't forgiven for my father's murder. But I was understood. It was worth all the riches of this world – all the sugar bowls, all the Snicket files, every VFD's fortunes and every stupid codes.

"You'll still need for long?" I asked, a vague smile on my lips he couldn't see. "'Cause I will get bored, you know.

\- I'm afraid I'll follow you for quite some times. You know too much.

\- Or not enough."

I eventually released him, of course, and he let me escape. I sat at the back of his taxi and watched the city getting smaller and smaller, the smokes rising to the sky and the sun starting to shine. I stared at the small dot the city became long after this small dot wasn't visible anymore. And when we reached the mountains and there was only the arid panorama of the hinterlands around us, I fell asleep on my bag. For the first times in ages, it seemed very empty.

 

I could go on. I could tell you that once we'd reached the border, I left Lemony with a quick note. I could tell you that, a few months later and after him finding me again, we went incognito to a masquerade organized by the Duchess of Winnipeg, that I finally met her and finally tasted bitter apples. I could tell you that I finally reassembled the Snicket files with every draft pages I found here and there. I could add that Lemony and I separated as many times as we reunited, and he apparently still needs me. And I could finish by saying that we know the Baudelaire are alive.

But I won't. I was not blamed for what happened once the sugar bowl had been destroyed, and was never charged with anything – it doesn't mean I couldn't be, though. Cassandre Dupin disappeared this day, and everything that remains of her are accusations that don't vanish and won't vanish.

I know that, should the Arsonists or the Volunteers find me, they wouldn't care about the months that passed and they would do exactly what they wanted to do when they brought me to court: eliminate me. This tale is not trying to stop them, it just tries to quench the thirst for truth that some still have. Those who ask the good questions.

This is how this tale ends. I would love to say I am a good woman, a volunteer with a noble heart who now travels the words to protect it from criminals – but I can't. But in fact, and it is the last confidence I'll make here, I know no one who can. VFD is corrupted, rotten to the core, monstrous. The time when its members were admirable is over, if it's ever been. I'm no better than Olaf, but certainly no worse than Kit Snicket or Bertrand Baudelaire.

And I'll still put out fires I didn't start, even if it means I'll end up in ashes.

********

" _Book found in the ashes of the Valorous Farms Dairy after the suspicious fire that destroyed the farm._

_An extensive study is requested. Apparently related to the Dupin, Snicket, Baudelaire and Quagmire's cases and to the events of the 667 Dark Avenue, the Heimlich hospital, the Valley of Four Drafts, the Hotel Denouement and the High Court. Mentions the existence of the Snicket File 1 and 2 as well as the sugar bowl._

_NB : it seems that it could prove Lemony Snicket isn't dead as it has been announced fifteen years ago, and that he isn't guilty of the crimes he was accused of. The file must be reopened._

_K., V., S. B"_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N : And here we are, at the end of this story! First things first, thank you very much for reading me. I actually really enjoyed writing this, and love Cassandre's character. I won't give any precise date, 'cause I'm the best to give expectations and never fulfill them (remind me of a certain someone hmm...), but I am already writing a second part of this story. It's going to be the last one, and I hope I'll be able to upload it here. I'll do so when I'll reach the end of it, so I'm sure I won't have a writer block while I'm supposed to upload it.
> 
> In any case, thank you again! Watch out for the smokes - the Villains' Felonious Deeds are never over.


	22. BREAKING NEWS

**THE MURDERERS' TALE IS NOW PUBLISHED!**

_Publisher Tiliss NECKLE has released the COMPLETE tale of the infamous MURDERERS Cassandre DUPIN and Lemony SNICKET!_

_Find the review of the DAILY PUNCTILIO in the NEXT PAGES by_ _Kate-Neb Ticsicre_


End file.
